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  1. #1

    Default Child Exploitation Through an Anonymous App

    My question involves criminal law for the state of: New York

    One of my passions for the last several years has been to help combat things such as child exploitation due to something that happened to someone close to me. With the invention of the internet and smart phones, as many of you know, predators and pedophiles are getting access to innocent children. I work mainly independently on my free time going on internet chat rooms to help get limit the ability of predators to exploit the innocent. However, over the last several weeks I have been delving into the world of chatting apps on the app store and I am shocked at how many there are!

    Over the last few days, I found this anonymous chatting app called NoName. Virtually you create a profile, adding your gender, age, and what time of chat you want (friendly chat, random chat, dirty chat, etc). The app says that it is only for 17+ members, and this is made pretty blatant as 18 is the minimum age you can put when creating your profile. Once you create a profile it can never be destroyed, but you can change your username anytime you want. The app has encrypted chat rooms, and wipes its servers of all messages, photos, and usernames older than 7 days each week.

    What I found out on the app is that a majority of users are underage teens of both genders along with older individuals. Most of these users are there to have a dirty chat. When I created a profile I created a profile as an 18 year old female. Within 10 minutes I received 50 chat invites and in the chats I explicitly made it evident that I was young anywhere between 14-16. These older men, who ranged between 30-50, sent me some of the most explicit pictures and messages and I was absolutely shocked. They kept demanding me to send them explicit pictures back. What I realized is that this probably occurs hundreds of times per hour on this app. I can't imagine how many real underage teens actually send real nudes to these predators. However, I have never heard of any case or investigation against this app. I talked, after lots of effort, to a staff member of this app and they said that old messages are saved for 7 days only and they don't save the device number or location of any user of the app.

    I am very troubled and confused because it scares me how much wrong stuff goes on in this app daily and how nothing has been done for 4 years since the app came into existence!!! I am sure some child has been severely exploited. I would really appreciate your guy's opinions considering many of you have a wealth of knowledge that I don't have?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Posts
    8,238

    Default Re: Good Citizen Who Needs Advise

    The app developer, just based on your description, is not responsible for what its various members do. It is no more responsible for that than, say, the phone company is for similar conversations like this that occur over the phone. In both cases they just provide the medium for people to communicate. It is the adults that go after the kids that are the problem, along with parents who do not watch what their kids do on their computers and phones. Too many parents seem to have no idea just how much trouble their kids can encounter online and don’t take the effort needed to monitor what their kids do. And as you noted, there are lots of chat programs and computer games with chat features that kids use that also draw adults looking to chat with them.

  3. #3

    Default Re: Good Citizen Who Needs Advise

    Yes, you are absolutely right.

    I was shocked what was sent to me when I posed as a teenage girl. Even when I lied to them and I told them I was 14 they said some gross things and sent some gross things as well!!

    I am just wondering if it is possible to catch these guys in any way. In an encrypted, anonymous chatting app where the app doesn't' even record device numbers how can anybody even stop these predators? I am guessing good parenting or shutting down these apps is the only way.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Posts
    8,238

    Default Re: Good Citizen Who Needs Advise

    Quote Quoting goodcitizen123
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    I am just wondering if it is possible to catch these guys in any way. In an encrypted, anonymous chatting app where the app doesn't' even record device numbers how can anybody even stop these predators? I am guessing good parenting or shutting down these apps is the only way.
    It is possible for law enforcement to go after people who take advantage of kids, but it takes some work and there are not enough resources for law enforcement to go after them all.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    47.606 N 122.332 W in body, still at 90 S in my mind.
    Posts
    1,678

    Default Re: Good Citizen Who Needs Advise

    So...you lied on an internet chat forum? Has it occurred to you how many of the other users are also liars? Did you know that many users in forums such as this are men posing and young girls to get their rocks off?

    I'm not going to defend the scumbags out there on the internet. I am going to criticize your attempts to trap them by using their methods. Your "passion" is you getting your rocks off. The simplest method to protect children from the internet is to limit access to it. I used to say that educating children is a better method but that presumes that children will only do what you tell them to do. I tell my kids to not drink or do drugs. They know that unprotected sex can have serious consequences and that sharing personal info online with strangers is shockingly stupid. Oddly, in light of this knowledge, my children have done all of these things.

    Every. Single. One.

    More than once.

    So far, the consequences have been minimal, and they usually are, if the frequency of severe consequences was higher we'd have far fewer adults who have first hand knowledge to use when educating their children. Well, we'd also have far few adults overall.

    My advice to you is to stop pretending you re a cop. That you stop staring into the abyss and get a better hobby, like, oh I don't know, writing angry letters to the editor or manufacturers or the like. That will be way more productive. If that doesn't grab you then perhaps you should just take a nap.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2017
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    355

    Default Re: Good Citizen Who Needs Advise

    The song, "Teach Your Children Well" comes to my mind...

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Massachusetts
    Posts
    24,521

    Default Re: Good Citizen Who Needs Advise

    Additionally, the internet is international. There's no guarantee that the people sending or demanding the pictures are anywhere in the US, and laws differ between states, let alone countries. What can the police do if the perpetrators are in Slovakia, or Singapore, or Sri Lanka? What happens if the pictures are taken, and sent from, a country where the age of consent is 14? (Yes, there are some.)

    While we all here might agree that what's happening is despicable, the powers of law enforcement to control it are limited.

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