Men covertly filming women at night and profiting from footage, BBC finds

Men are covertly filming women on nights out, then making money by posting the videos online, a BBC investigation has found.

The videos, often described as "walking tours" or "nightlife content", are published on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. They focus almost entirely on women in dresses and skirts, many filmed from behind or at low angles, sometimes revealing intimate parts of the body.

We tracked down nearly 50 women who had been filmed and found that many were unaware of what had happened. They expressed feelings of fear and humiliation.

One 21-year-old woman, who was filmed from a low angle showing up her skirt, said she had been so affected by seeing footage of herself uploaded without her consent that she has been left feeling paranoid whenever she leaves her home.

The BBC has identified more than 65 online channels with this type of content, whose videos have collectively been viewed more than three billion times over the past three years. The videos focus on nights out in major cities worldwide including London, Oslo, Miami and Bangkok - but one of the most popular locations is Manchester.

Our team went undercover in the city, filming men as they covertly recorded women on a night out, exposing some of the most prolific operators, linked to 12 accounts. This included a local taxi driver and two men who had travelled from Sweden to film in the UK. Two other men, whose channels claim they are based in Norway and Monaco, were spotted filming but we were not able to confirm their identities.

Our investigation is yet another example of women being filmed in public by men - often for profit - without their consent or knowledge.

A separate BBC investigation last month exposed how male influencers claiming to offer pick-up advice use smart glasses to record conversations with women and then post the footage online. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in response that the government wouldn't tolerate new technology being used to create more violence and harassment against women and girls.

It is not a crime to film in public spaces but a lawyer specialising in image-based abuse said these types of videos fall into a legally "grey area" and could break harassment and voyeurism laws.

Several of the videos we shared with YouTube remain available. The video-sharing platform deactivated two accounts after we contacted it with the findings of our investigation.

TikTok has removed four channels. Videos on Facebook and Instagram remain active.

It was late October and Grace, not her real name, was outside a club in Manchester, taking photos on her phone while celebrating her friend's 21st birthday. Her younger sister, Sophie, whose name we have also changed, was with them. She had just turned 18 and it was her first time clubbing in the city.

"It was just a normal night," says Grace. "We had absolutely no idea we were being filmed."

It wasn't until we contacted her that she discovered a video of that moment had been posted on YouTube. Footage showing up her skirt had been watched more than three million times by strangers online.

"I planned my outfit carefully," Grace recalls. "From eye level everything was covered. But the angle in the footage was lower. It made me think: how close was he?"

Sophie also appeared in the videos but was not focused on. She says she is - like her sister - "completely paranoid now" because of what happened to them.

"I've not been out because I'm just scared," she says. "This isn't normal. It shouldn't have happened."

Grace and Sophie are among thousands of women we have seen in hundreds of videos over the course of this investigation.

One question remains for them both: who was filming and why did they do it?

We have monitored hours of these videos, posted by multiple accounts. Some of the most popular channels have racked up more than 200 million views.

The thumbnail on almost every video posted focuses on young women in dresses or skirts, and high heels, with titles that make clear women will be appearing in the footage.

Many of the videos filmed in Manchester show women walking between clubs and sitting on kerbs, with the camera often lingering while they readjust their clothing or pull their skirts down. Hundreds of misogynistic comments appear below nearly every video.

"Look at how these ladies are dressed, no wonder they get attacked," one person posted, with a laughing emoji.

"They belong to the streets", "cellulitis night out" and "little piglets everywhere" were other comments seen beneath videos.

While we found many of the women in the videos relatively easy to identify, the men running the channels were harder to track down. The men do not use their real names online, but several of them were identifiable by using publicly available data.

The channel that posted the video of Grace and Sophie is run by a man we identified as Florjan Reka, a 35-year-old based in Sweden.

He runs one of the most prolific YouTube channels of its kind, with nearly 200 million views and 399,000 subscribers, and also has a Facebook page with more than 600,000 followers. We learned he had registered his channel as a business in Sweden, where he claims to be conducting "influencer activities, marketing and advertising".

We wanted to see how he operated, so went undercover over the busy Halloween weekend in Manchester city centre.

On the first night, after waiting for hours, we spotted Reka walking quickly just before 02:00 with another man, who we later identified as his brother - Roland.

At one point, the brothers appeared to be pretending to look at their phones at waist height. But they were actually holding separate cameras at the same level and filming women as they passed directly beside them. The brothers seemed unaware they were being watched by us.

We observed the pair, who split up to film outside different clubs, reconvening throughout the night. On the second night that weekend, they wore black masks, blending in with partygoers in costume.

Over the next few days, new videos from the streets of Manchester started appearing on multiple social media accounts we know to be linked to Florjan Reka. Footage posted matched angles we observed the brothers filming from.

A woman can be seen trying to pull her skirt up as it slipped down at the start of one video posted to the channel we linked to Roland Reka. In other footage, women were walking away but the camera had filmed them at a low angle, with their buttocks exposed. In one video, posted to Florjan Reka's Facebook page, the camera lingers on a woman's cleavage as she rearranges her top.

In all of the videos, none of the women seem to know they are being filmed.

We attempted to contact Florjan Reka for comment in the months following Halloween. After he failed to respond, we travelled to Sweden to try to speak to him. He ignored questions both times and did not respond to a letter left in his mailbox.

Over Halloween in Manchester, we also spotted three other men filming women. They seemed to know each other - and the Reka brothers - all of them stopping to speak at various points during the night.

One of them was Dean Hill, a 36-year-old taxi driver who works locally. We saw him filming with a small camera close to his chest while walking past groups of girls, before doubling back to film them from behind.

The BBC watched hundreds of hours of his videos. In some of the footage - similar to Reka brothers' posts - Hill appears to follow women as they attempt to pull down their skirts or adjust their clothing. In one, the camera trails behind a woman in a Halloween costume for nearly two minutes, at one point seeming to speed up to catch up with her.

Hill strongly denies any wrongdoing and told the BBC he does not film individuals or intimate body parts, and that his camera is visible at all times.

"I do not film up skirts, intimate body parts, or any form of nudity. I have not engaged in upskirting or voyeuristic filming, and my videos do not contain sexually explicit content," he said in a message.

"The footage is not selective and does not target any particular group. It reflects whoever happens to be present in public spaces at the time of filming.

"I am aware that some online content creators may engage in inappropriate practices; however, my channel does not do so. Any suggestion to the contrary does not reflect the nature or purpose of my content."

Another man, who we contacted via his media channels but have been unable to identify, also denied doing anything wrong or violating any rules. He said he only filmed nightlife and walking videos, adding that he had deleted a number of his posts.

Police have not accused any of the men we have investigated of any criminal activity.

Greater Manchester Police arrested a man in 2024 on suspicion of stalking and harassment, following reports of similar videos of women on nights out being filmed.

The force said it was the first arrest of its kind in the country. But this month it said it would be taking no further action against the suspect because of "limitations within the current legislation", adding it was exploring "civil routes" to tackle the issue.

The industry of covertly filming women on nights out could be making "revenues in the multi-million pound range", says Prof Annabelle Gawer, director of the Centre of Digital Economy at the University of Surrey.

"We're talking about billions of cumulative views across this whole ecosystem," she says, adding that a video with a million views could make up to £5,000.

Under UK law, filming in public places is rarely illegal, but for many of the women we spoke to, the fact that these videos made money for the creators has left them feeling angry and frustrated.

The law around this sort of content is in a "grey area", says Honza Cervenka, a solicitor with McAllister Olivarius specialising in image-based sexual abuse.

"It skirts between the line for a number of different crimes, including voyeurism and harassment, which is what has given it the space to grow and grow," he says.

For the crime of harassment, there needs to be a "course of conduct" of two or more harassing incidents, which can include "harassing on the street and then online harassment, so posting the video or sharing it", Cervenka says.

Posting a video, then using a woman's image as a thumbnail on other videos, could amount to harassment, he adds.

YouTube has deactivated two accounts linked to Florjan Reka after we contacted the company with the findings of our investigation. In a post on X, Florjan Reka asked YouTube for the decision to be reviewed, saying he only publishes "public walking tour videos".

Several of the videos we shared with YouTube remain online. The video-sharing platform says it "rigorously enforces" its community guidelines. It added that, at the end of 2025, it removed 1.8 million videos for violating its harassment policies.

The other accounts we linked to individual men remain online. One man appears to have renamed his channel, another has removed all his content.

TikTok has removed four channels we shared with them.

The channels we sent to Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, remain active. The company told us it has removed content that violated its policies.

The video of Grace and Sophie is one of the many that has been removed.

The sisters say it is a small victory for them, but Grace is unsure if it will make a difference.

"He's got the video of me on his phone or his computer. What's to stop him from sharing it again?" she says.

"There's probably no shutting it down."

If you have information about this story and would like to share your experiences please contact [email protected]. Do include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.