Europe’s policing agency alerted on Tuesday that hi-tech criminals are using legitimate chat sites such as Skype in selling live streams of child sex, for hard-to-trace virtual currencies like Bitcoin
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The sale of child abuse live streams over legitimate chat sites or video chat apps. Is much harder to trace than when the abuse is sold from a website. Using virtual currencies like Bitcoin also makes the criminals harder to race than if they are using credit card payments.
Last year, investigators for the first time came across child abuse being sale exclusively for Bitcoin.
“Criminals that sexually exploit children online are becoming more entrepreneurial with technological developments and are profiting financially,” Europol said in a special report on commercial sexual exploitation of children online.
The reports compiled by Europol’s EC3 cybercrime center, together with Eurojust, NGOs, credit card and online giants such as Google and Microsoft shows a very disturbing fact in the caveat of rising online child abuse.
“The research shows that the live streaming of abuse for payment is no longer an emerging trend but an established reality,” the report said.
Criminal gangs recruit destitute children or their own children for the abuse. “These persons offer homeless children or children from their own family for the sexual abuse by individuals, live in front of a camera, in the European Union or developing countries, for financial gain,” the report said.
Filipino police recently busted a pedophile sphere that streamed live sex involving children as young as six, the report said. Police rescued 15 victims aged between six and 15, and arrested 29 people including gang members and people who allegedly paid to watch the abuse in 13 countries. Over 700 other suspected purchasers of online child sex abuse filme in the Philippines have been identifie, Europol said.
Police and the private sector should monitor the Internet for the growth of alternative forms of payment “as a potential consequence of further migration from traditional payment systems to a new, largely unregulated digital economy,” Europol said.
Last year in an effort to trace online sexual predators, Sweetie, a computer generate was create by children’s rights organization – Terre des hommes as an entrapment operation. It was use to lure online sexual predators into providing personally-identifiable information. So that this information could then be report to law enforcement agencies.
A ‘puppeteer’ for Sweetie would enter a chat room, claiming to be a ten-year-old Philippine girl. Sexual predators would open webcam connections with ‘her’, during which programmers would animate Sweetie as necessary in real time. As the dialogue between Sweetie and the predator progressed, the predator would make a $20 wire transfer and provide his Skype address. Once this information was gathere, the chat with Sweetie would be shut down. And the information was give to the local police or Interpol. Sweetie operate for ten weeks, during which over 1000 predators, in 71 countries, gave Sweetie enough information for them to be identifie. Sweetie has now been retire, and ‘will not be use again’.
Investing your bitcoins in online gambling
© Agence France Presse | Source 2
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