As with using legitimate mainstream chat sites to broadcast the abuse, virtual currency payments like Bitcoin are more difficult to track down than credit card payments
Hi-tech criminals are increasingly selling live streams of child sex through legitimate chat sites and apps like Skype for hard-to-understand virtual currencies like Bitcoin, the European police authority warned on Tuesday.
“Criminals who sexually exploit children online become more entrepreneurial with technological developments and benefit financially,” Europol said in a special report on commercial sexual exploitation of children online.
Compiled by the EC3 Center for Cybercrime in Europe, together with Eurojust, NGOs, credit card and online giants such as Google and Microsoft, the report paints a worrying picture of increasing child abuse online.
Selling live streams of child abuse through legitimate chat websites or video chat apps is much more difficult to track than when the abuse is being sold from a website.
“Research shows that live streaming of payment abuse is no longer an emerging trend, it is an established reality,” the report said.
Criminal gangs recruit disadvantaged children or their own children for abuse.
“These individuals offer sexual abuse to homeless children or children of their own families by individuals who live in front of a camera, in the European Union or in developing countries, for financial gain,” the report said.
Filippino police recently blown up a pedophile ring broadcasting live sex with children ages six and up, the report said.
Police rescued 15 victims between the ages of 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 online child abuse buyers filmed in the Philippines have been identified, according to Europol.
As with using legitimate mainstream chat sites to broadcast the abuse, virtual currency payments like Bitcoin are more difficult to track down than credit card payments.
Last year, investigators first discovered that child abuse was being sold exclusively for bitcoins, the report said.
Police and the private sector should monitor the Internet for the growth of alternative payment methods, “as a possible consequence of the further migration from traditional payment systems to a new, largely unregulated digital economy,” said Europol.
Australia warns of “tailor-made” online child abuse
© 2015 AFP
Quote: Online child abuse on Skype, Bitcoin: Europol (2015, February 24), accessed on May 2, 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2015-02-online-child-abuse-skype-bitcoin.html
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