After break-ups, bitter feelings can be expected in many cases. When the person you love leaves you or does something that hurts you badly enough to make you want to leave them, sometimes you might be tempted to get revenge. All your pain might feel unfair, and maybe if they suffered some, you’d feel better, right?

This is the mentality people who distribute revenge porn typically have. Revenge porn is sexually explicit media that is shared online without the consent of the pictured individual. When mad at an ex, showing their naked body to the world seems like an easy, effortless way to get back at them, but it could also go beyond painful humiliation. Revenge porn has the potential to ruin lives.

Shaunna Lane, now 22, was a victim of revenge porn when she was 19 and faced relentless harassment over the pictures that were spread by her ex-boyfriend. Her story was published online by The Mirror, an online tabloid in the United Kingdom. Viewers of Lane’s pictures sent her messages daily. She was called a whore and a slut, was told of how ugly she was and was sent threats of rape. Some even messaged Lane’s mother regarding the photos, expressing desires to have sex with Lane, who eventually became too scared to leave her home.

Thankfully, revenge porn is not something most ex-partners resort to. A 2013 study by McAfee found only about 10 percent of people have threatened to use revenge porn against someone. Of that 10 percent, 60 percent carried out their threats and actually published the media.

Even when the results of revenge porn aren’t as drastic as they were in Lane’s case, I still struggle to understand how anyone would feel this an acceptable way to get back at an ex. The humiliation the victims face alone is enough for what I’d consider any empathetic human being to realize revenge porn is a cruel act. There’s also the concern of family or potential employers stumbling across it, which can have an even greater impact on the victim’s life. It’s frightening to me that negative, selfish emotions can drive someone to risk so much of another’s person’s reputation and, in extreme cases like Lane’s, safety.

Although nobody wants to think that their current lover would ever betray them so harshly, my overall advice to people who feel scared of the possibility of being targeted is to refrain completely from sharing any nude or racy media of themselves with anyone. It is unrealistic to try to create a world, especially now with multimedia messaging, webcams and the like, where all couples will refrain from sharing and creating intimate pictures and videos. The best solution is to institute more laws criminalizing revenge porn.

Currently, only twelve states have laws against revenge porn. This means in any other state, victims do not have rights to force the removal of the media or to seek punishment against those who spread the media. This can be a source of uneasiness, but the good news is that there’s a petition online at endrevengeporn.org looking to criminalize this sadistic act at both state and federal levels.

At the time that I’m writing this, however, the petition only has 7,718 signatures out of the 100,000 needed. This is our chance to make some sort of a difference. I have signed the petition myself, and it’d make a world of impact if you did too.