Women sunbathing naked on yacht secretly filmed by men with drone in Spain

Group of young women accuse young men of using a drone to spy on them as they sunbathed in the nude. Photo / 123RF

In these days of modern technology, it seems that nowhere is safe from prying eyes - not even a private yacht.

As reported in El Pais, a group of young women complained to police after they noticed a drone flying over them last weekend as they sunbathed naked on a yacht one of them owned off the coast of Mallorca, Spain.

Noticing that the drone was hovering over their vessel with its red filming light illuminated, they saw another yacht about 20m from their own, manned by a group of young men, according to the Daily Mail.

The men, they said, were watching the monitor and laughing at them.

When the furious young women ordered the men to withdraw the drone, they simply laughed. They eventually withdrew it after noticing one of the women was filming proceedings on her mobile phone.

The women then followed the drone pilots back to port and alerted the police.

The young men then grew frightened and offered the women money "to eat in a nice restaurant" if they didn't report them, the newspaper said.

They then admitted that they had taken footage of the women sunbathing, but claimed the footage had been immediately deleted.

Once the police arrived, they mediated between the two sides and investigated whether the drone pilots had violated the young women's privacy and if they had the correct licence to operate the drone.

The increasing popularity of drones has led to fears they could be used by peeping toms and drug smugglers, as well as for other nefarious purposes.

The Register reported in April that complaints made to police in the UK about drones rose sharply from just a few hundred in 2014 to more than 3400 last year.