A male voyeur is commonly labelled as "Peeping Tom" or a "Jags", a term which originates from the Lady Godiva legend.

[5] The DSM-IV defines voyeurism as the act of observing "individuals, usually strangers, engaging in sexual activity, exhibitionism, or disrobing".

[8] Voyeurs were well-paying hole-lookers in especially Parisian brothels, a commercial innovation described as far back as 1857 but not gaining much notoriety until the 1880s, and not attracting formal medical-forensic recognition until the early 1890s.

Subsequent research showed that 65% of men had engaged in peeping, which suggests that this behaviour is widely spread throughout the population.

[6] Congruent with this, research found voyeurism to be the most common sexual law-breaking behaviour in both clinical and general populations.

[18] Additionally shifting voyeurs from voyeuristic behaviour, to looking at graphic pornography, to looking at the nudes in Playboy has been successfully used as a treatment.

There have been multiple instances of successful treatment of voyeurism through putting patients on fluoxetine and treating their voyeuristic behaviour as a compulsion.

The United States FBI assert that some individuals who engage in "nuisance" offences (such as voyeurism) may also have a propensity for violence based on behaviours of serious sex offenders.

[24] An FBI researcher has suggested that voyeurs are likely to demonstrate some characteristics that are common, but not universal, among serious sexual offenders who invest considerable time and effort in the capturing of a victim (or image of a victim); careful, methodical planning devoted to the selection and preparation of equipment; and often meticulous attention to detail.

It became public knowledge that a website called peepingthong.com had become a depository of photos showing young women, many of them University of Victoria students, sitting down at various campus locations, such as libraries.

While the act of photographing them in isolation may not have caused a commotion, each of the women revealed their thong underwear to create a whale tail.

The chairwoman of the student union, Joanna Groves, believed that perpetrator(s) committed an action that were “a violation of someone’s privacy.”[26] The outreach coordinator for the University of Victoria Student Society Women's Centre, Caitlin Warbeck, went as far as to call it “sexual assault.”[27] The photographed individuals also appeared to be completely unaware that they were being watched.

The Court of Appeal confirmed a sentence of nine months' imprisonment to reflect the seriousness of the abuse of trust and the traumatic effect on the victims.

In another English case in 2009, R v Wilkins (2010),[33][34] a man who filmed his intercourse with five of his lovers for his own private viewing was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to sign onto the Sex Offender Register for ten years.

Richards had sought "to have two voyeurism charges under section 67 of the Sexual Offences Act dismissed on the grounds that he had committed no crime".

[38] In an unusual step, the court allowed Emily Hunt, a person not involved in the case, to intervene on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The CPS had argued that Hunt's alleged attacker had not violated the law when he "took a video lasting over one minute of her naked and unconscious" in a hotel room -- the basis being that there should be no expectation of privacy in the bedroom.

They involve places and times when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a reasonable supposition they are not being photographed or filmed -- by "any mechanical, digital or electronic viewing device, camera or any other instrument capable of recording, storing or transmitting visual images that can be utilised to observe a person.

In South Korea, specialty teams have been set up to regularly check places like bathrooms and change-rooms for hidden cameras known as "molka".

Those convicted of voyeurism face a maximum punishment of one year in jail and a fine -- based on insulting a woman's modesty.

[46] Recent cases in 2016 include the sentencing of church facility manager Kenneth Yeo Jia Chuan who filmed women in toilets.

[47][48] Secret photography by law enforcement authorities is called surveillance and is not considered to be voyeurism, though it may be unlawful or regulated in some countries.