Accidentally Accessing Child Pornography Online

[Tyler_F_Hunting]

My question involves criminal law for the state of: Pennsylvania

I was simply playing minecraft last night and sombody was spamming a link on there and it said something like "awesome, click this link (link)" and people were saying goes haha awesome and that's cool. And some said oh god. So I kinda figured it was a jump scare or something all in good fun but when I clicked the link it opened up and there was a tab that said art gallary and I clicked it thinking "oh cool sombody did fan art for the server" but after I clicked it 2 tabs opened up and they both consisted of two images. And the images consisted of naked women of the age of at least 35 or 40. I scrolled down a little bit on one of the images and it ended not really paying attention to the pics in the bottom of that pic but then on the other one I scrolled down and saw child pornagraphy. A lot of it. But it was a buchild of different children. The picures were small and hard for me to see so I clicked on a pic in disbelief that it was a child becsuse it looked blurry but when it was blown up and bigger I could easily make out a very wound child with its genitals out and I immediately tried to close out the pages but they didn't actually close out until about 25 secs later. I didn't look at any of it on purpose. I need to know what the could lead to and if it will likely of likely not become a legal issue.

[Taxing Matters]

One visit to the site where you accessed one image of child porn is not at all likely to lead to criminal charges. But if you do it again, the odds will keep going up. After all, once can easily be explained as a mistake, and prosecutors aren’t interested in that. Repeatedly looking at and downloading child porn, though, isn’t a mistake and can lead to serious federal felony charges and perhaps state charges, too.

Something you should learn from this: never, ever click on a link to some unknown site, especially when that link is given to you by some anonymous person on the internet. That link could lead to child porn, could lead you to download a computer virus that trashes your computer or steals your personal information, etc. While most players on Minecraft and other games are are not crooks, some are, and there is no way to tell the difference when you don’t know them.

[Mr. Knowitall]

If you access an image that you believe to be child pornography and, in the event of a possible federal criminal charge, you want to be able to later assert that you did so by accident, you must report the incident to an appropriate authority, destroy the images that are on your hard drive, or both. Those steps may also help you with a possible state charge.

(e)Affirmative Defense.—It shall be an affirmative defense to a charge of violating subsection (b) that the defendant —

(1) possessed less than 3 such visual depictions; and

(2) promptly and in good faith, and without retaining or allowing any person, other than a law enforcement agency, to access any such visual depiction—

(A) took reasonable steps to destroy each such visual depiction; or

(B) reported the matter to a law enforcement agency and afforded that agency access to each such visual depiction.

[qwaspolk69]

Never click on links from unknown sources!!!! They generally are spam or have viruses. I had to figure out a different way to reset my ex's phone when I was with him because he clicked on something and got that "The FBI is watching you" virus message. It wasn't a simple hard reset either. I had to search it for his phone. He was probably watching porn. Who knows? He thought it was real too. I said no - the FBI is going to come knocking down your door if they want you not tell you to send them $200 or whatever.

Do not click on links from unknown or untrusted sources!! Computer security 101!