People forwarding personal photographs of their friends to Facebook pages popular with teenagers could face abuse charges.
The popular new pages Snapchat Leaked have photos sent in anonymously by people who receive the pictures through the smartphone application Snapchat.
The application is a popular way for people to send rude, funny or intimate photos to their friends.
It shows the photo for only a few seconds but people quickly worked out a way to save the photos permanently and are uploading them to the Snapchat Leaked pages.
A 16-year-old girl whose semi-naked photo was published online told Radio New Zealand the pages are sick and humiliating and destroy people's privacy.
She flagged the photo for Facebook to remove almost three weeks ago but it is still online.
The girl is upset the page has not been shut down.
An officer with the online child exploitation team, Detective Senior Sergeant John Michael, says people who forward the images or administer such pages could face charges.
He says there is a real danger of the problem spiralling out of control.
Mr Michael says police are following a number of lines of inquiry involving Snapchat photos.
