Women confront ‘creep’ who took photos of them by pool in viral TikTok video

A group of friends have shared the hairraising moment they confronted a man who had been secretly taking photos of them.

TikTok user @maiphammy posted a video of the encounter captioned: “Stay safe out there ladies. Decided to confront a creep taking pics of us when we were just trying to hang by the pool. HE TRIED DENYING IT.”

In the clip, the man feigned ignorance as to why the young women were upset after they walked over and challenged him.

"Excuse me, I’d really appreciate it if you deleted the photos of us off your phone," one of the girls could be heard saying to him in a voice recording.

The man responded by saying he “didn’t understand” what they were talking about, insisting he was just lounging by the pool, same as they were.

They replied by demanding that he prove his innocence by showing them his camera roll.

Instantly, the women saw streams of photos of themselves, despite the stranger’s attempts to cover his tracks.

He tried to hide his clandestine picture-taking by opening up his “favourites” album, rather than his recently-taken images, but the girls would not be duped.

Eventually he admitted defeat, promising he would delete the images from his phone, but simultaneously putting the device down.

A voice recording captured the moment they confronted the “creepy” man@maiphammy/TikTok

"No, delete them right in front of our face," one of the women demanded, prompting him to begin shakily scrolling through his phone and erasing the offending pics.

The man instructed the girls to move away from him as he did it, describing their presence as “intimidating”.

However, they argued that they weren’t trying to make him nervous but wanted to see with their own eyes that he was deleting all the pictures.

At one point, one of the women thought she spotted a video of herself, but he insisted it was a photo, not a video, and agreed to remove that too.

The recording of their confrontation has racked up more than 4.9 million views and 25,000 comments in just two days, as fellow TikTokers rushed to hail the friends for their bravery.

“So proud of you for standing up for yourselves,” one admirer wrote.

“You guys did the best thing, you’re so brave,” added another.

Scores of others pointed out that the mortified man began trembling as he followed their instructions, with one suggesting: “He’s probably scared because he has a lot of pictures [of] other girls as well.”

While another commented: “He said it’s intimidating for you to stand behind him like it’s not even more intimidating for girls to have pictures taken of them like this.”

The man asked the women not to hover over him as he deleted the snaps@maiphammy/TikTok

However, others questioned the women’s approach, suggesting it was risky or even hypocritical.

One suggested they should have alerted a member of the pool’s security or management team to the stranger’s behaviour, rather than simply march over to him themselves.

While others argued that they shouldn’t have taken a video of him without his consent.

One wrote: “I think what he did to you was awful but you actually also took a video of him and published it so that’s [sic] a bit of hypocrisy in there.”

But numerous users disagreed with this assessment, with one replying: “It’s not hypocritical because he was taking sexual content of them, they are getting proof and awareness to help others know that it’s OK to confront someone.”

Meanwhile, another responded bluntly: “He deserved worse for what he did.”