Explicit pictures of unsuspecting women are being used on the internet chatroom Reddit, with offers being made by men to trade them for money.

One of the threads listed a picture of a woman with the accompanying text ‘Anyone got Ystradgynlais girls to trade? DM me’.

Another one asked ‘Anyone know [girl’s name] from [girl’s hometown]?’

And another asked ‘Any Port Talbot/Neath/Swansea girls? New phone nothing to trade’.

Women have described how they feel violated after finding their photographs being shared and requested by hundreds of men on the internet chatroom.

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"I've never been more disgusted and violated by something in my entire life,” said one 20-year-old teaching assistant from South Wales.

“The page I found my image on had 1,900 members, who traded pictures and videos for their own pleasure.

"Some charge money and some give away pictures that they have in exchange for someone else’s."

Some of the threads are public and are online for only a few days before they are taken down, while others are set to be private with only people approved by moderators allowed to view the photographs and take part.

In the chatrooms, people post photographs of women and ask if anyone knows who they are or have other photographs of them that they might share.

"What's worse is that the owners of the page have hundreds of folders labelled with the names of women and their pictures," said another woman.

"It doesn't matter how old you are, who you are or what you look like. These people have everything."

One user had collected a database of hundreds of photos that had been exchanged, all being used as currency to swap and share in order to gain new photos.

And each of these photographs were subsequently shared without consent.

"I felt frightened when I saw my full name being used on reddit as it was obvious that this person knew me,” said another victim.

"I obviously reported it to Reddit but nothing camw back."

Statistics from Google Ad Planner suggest that 74 per cent of Reddit users are male and less than 1 per cent are aged 65 or over.