Data.

The charity warns organised criminals are taking advantage of “systemic failures” in online security infrastructure.

Commercial websites host a wide range of child sexual abuse imagery which is available for users to buy. The imagery for sale can involve victims of all ages, and can include some of the most severe and extreme forms of sexual abuse.

Some of these sites have been deliberately disguised to appear as non-criminal sites or to look inactive in an attempt to operate on the open web while avoiding detection. Many of these sites accept payment via cryptocurrencies, card payments or money transfer services.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    If these sites are known, why are they allowed to operate? AFAIK there is no country where it is legal.

    • MurrayL@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      In some cases they’re deliberately allowed to operate as a honey trap, allowing authorities to identify and arrest as many users as possible.

      If you simply shut the site down, the users go elsewhere and you have to find them again.

      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        to identify and arrest as many users as possible.

        You mean, to identify the gangs running them. Identifying the users helps nothing, same for just shutting it down.

        Just wanted to point out the erronous criminalizing the user mindset the media mafia pushes.

          • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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            2 days ago

            Depends on jurisdiction. And better they watch it and not do it, no? Remember, pedophilia is a disorder.

            • QuandaleDingle@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              That reasoning would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that the gangs have to abduct and harm children to make their CSAM.

              • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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                2 days ago

                With AI and Hentai? Well, i’m not a phsychologist, so i guess it’s not always enough?

                I only wanted to say that you shouldn’t conflate the disorder with the people who act on it. And i also don’t want to downplay the problem.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        OK, personally I don’t think such honey traps should be legal, you can never say for sure, that a person falling for it, would use an illegal site if the honey trap didn’t exist.
        IMO it’s immoral, and luckily in my country they are in principle illegal, although the police here is trying to push the line on that.

        The honey trap could be the thing that “ignited” the interest for an individual!
        It can also be the trigger for other people to make similar sites, as in if they can do it, we can do it too.
        Honey traps break with the fundamentals of justice in many ways, and making them legal is a sign of a sick society IMO.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Seems it’s not illegal if you are a billionaire.
        But at least in Europe it has consequences for people if they are in the Epstein files.
        But in USA it seems it’s just considered to be a group of friends with special interests! 🤢