Violence 4.0: Digital hell knows no bounds. Revenge porn and stalking, the internet as a weapon aimed at women.

Over 470 Red Code activations in one year. The Postal Police's 2025 report reveals the ferocious face of the web: no longer just scams, but a "social slaughterhouse" where intimacy becomes a commodity for blackmail. Male sexual extortion cases are on the rise, while women remain the favorite targets of cyberstalkers.

The invisible siege

It's no longer just a question of numbers, it's a siege. And the trench runs along the fiber optic cables, enters smartphones, vibrates in the pockets of thousands of victims. 2025 presents us with a merciless snapshot: violence has morphed, becoming digital, surgical, viral.

Reading the documents in the Postal Police's annual report, it's immediately clear that the challenge for investigators is no longer chasing crime, but attempting to stem the flow of crime. Because when an intimate video ends up online, the damage is unquantifiable: it's eternal. The "chain of victimization"—as it's called in technical jargon—is a mechanism that crushes entire lives in just a few clicks.

The Red Code: the safety net

This is where the toughest game is played out: the Red Code. In 2025, there were 477 requests for activation for digital crimes. Behind this cold figure are faces, names, and desperation. Revenge porn (the illicit distribution of sexually explicit images) takes the lion's share: 240 cases in one year.

This means that almost every day and a half, someone in Italy sees their privacy violated and exposed to public ridicule. And if you think this is a neutral phenomenon, you're wrong: 183 victims are women. It's gender-based violence fueled by revenge and control, amplified by the firepower of social media.

Online Stalking follows closely behind. 189 emergency procedures have been activated. Here too, the focus is on women: 159 women are stalked, hounded in chat rooms, bombarded with messages, forced to change their lifestyles to escape a shadow that has no body but a thousand digital eyes.

Child predators and the sextortion nightmare

But digital horror doesn't respect age. The report opens the Pandora's box of child pornography: 2.574 cases processed, 222 arrests. These numbers are shocking. Predators prey where defenses are lowest: 55% of grooming cases are concentrated between the ages of 14 and 16.

And then there's Sextortion, sexual extortion. A subtle crime that overturns gender norms. The victims are male in 89% of cases (1.092 men out of 1.225 total cases). The script is always the same, cruel and effective: a friend request, a naughty video call, and then the trap is sprung. "Pay up or I'll show everything to your wife, your friends, your boss." A criminal enterprise that thrives on shame and silence.

Beyond Statistics: The Work of Investigators

In this digital Wild West scenario, the state's response is attempting to be a wall. The Operations Section has investigated 1.298 people and conducted 245 searches. These aren't just police operations; they are last-minute rescue attempts. Because online, unlike on the streets, blood can't be wiped away. It remains there, pixel after pixel, testifying that violence today doesn't need punches to hurt.

TABLE: DIGITAL VIOLENCE NUMBERS (2025)

Data reprocessed and sorted by incidence volume of the phenomena handled by the Postal Police.

*Source: Re-elaboration of data from the Postal Police Report 2025