Spam Advertising Child Porn is on the Rise
By Leslie Brooks Suzukamo
Originally published in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, December 17, 2001
ST. PAUL, Minn. — ''Hello dear friends!'' reads the cheerful e-mail greeting. "I am Russian underage photographer. I am 51 y.o. … "
Then comes the jolt: "I have portal of best underage sites in my collection. I like to photograph little girls and boys. Children like to show me genitals.''
For the past few weeks, copies of this and other e-mails that advertise child-pornography Web sites have appeared in computer inboxes across the country with increasing frequency, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
While this isn't a new tactic for child pornographers, the seamy missives haven't been well publicized and have been vastly underreported by recipients, say law enforcement officials. And the e-mails appear to be increasing.
The U.S. Customs Department acknowledged that it's investigating the "Hello dear friends!'' e-mail, but a spokesman declined to elaborate, citing the investigation.
The e-mails are raising additional concern because they signal an increased boldness by child pornographers, who tend to flaunt the law with little apparent fear of being caught.
Sending the unsolicited e-mail—commonly referred to as spam—is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and possessing child pornography can bring a 10-year felony prison sentence, as well.
Much of the child pornography is coming from overseas, particularly Russia and other former Eastern-bloc countries where prostitution and the sexual enslavement of children and women has become a problem, said Daniel Armagh, director of legal education for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Va.
In response, U.S. law enforcement has become more aggressive.
In August, 100 people were arrested in a nationwide crackdown on child porn on the Internet that grew out of a two-year investigation of a Web-site company in Fort Worth, Texas, called Landslide Productions.
The case began with a tip from a St. Paul postal inspector who was operating a Web-site sting involving child porn. Landslide, whose owner received the first-ever life sentence for pornography, drew more than 300,000 subscribers who paid $29.95 a month for access to adult pornography, images of sex with animals, and child pornography.
Children are especially at risk, say officials at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, because children are less likely to be careful online. They can communicate in chat rooms with unknown individuals who might collect their online addresses to send them pornographic spam.
Furthermore, given the popularity of the Internet among kids, any rise in child-porn spam also increases the possibility of children running across it in personal e-mail accounts, experts believe.
"We're getting an awful lot of reports,'' said Michelle Collins, a senior analyst for the children's center, which seeks tips through its Web site, www.missing.org.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's data doesn't have categories to allow it to automatically track reports of child-porn spam specifically, but Collins said she and her colleagues have noticed a marked increase in such reports over the past few weeks from inspecting the 500 to 700 reports of child exploitation of all kinds sent to the center's tip line.
The center has received more than 60 reports of the "Hello dear friends!'' message from the purported Russian photographer in the past few weeks, she said. Most of the reports were made anonymously by concerned recipients. "How many received it and did not report it?'' Collins asked.
Child pornographers keep one step ahead of the law by regularly changing their Web-site addresses when they sense police closing in, says Cmdr. Rick Anderson, head of the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
"It's a cat-and-mouse game,'' Anderson said. "They realize the only way they can make money is if they keep mailing out these messages'' to draw new customers.
Spammers use a variety of tools to collect e-mail addresses.
There are Web sites that allow its users to create profiles and search for members with similar profiles, for example. Spammers also harvest names from Internet "chat rooms,'' which also allows them to target their lists according to interests, or they employ "spider'' programs that search Web pages and pluck out e-mail addresses.
Some Web sites make a business of e-mail addresses, using guest books or registration forms to collect them and then selling them in bulk to online direct marketers.
Other sites use subterfuge to extract an unknowing Web surfer's e-mail address from the Web browser, or sending hoaxes to trick people into giving valid e-mail addresses by promising free gifts for forwarding a chain letter as long as it is copied to the spammer.
The spammer isn't targeting individuals, Collins said. He's throwing a wide name-collection net and hauling in e-mail addresses indiscriminately.
New reports of child-porn spam also may be emerging because outraged adults who receive it are only lately learning where to turn for help.
Anderson said that at a public presentation three weeks ago, he heard from Twin Cities parents who reported receiving e-mail with titles like "pre-teen sex'' or "Lolita sex.'' The parents were frustrated because they didn't know what they could do other than delete them, the commander said.
Tom Geller, founder of the nonprofit Spamcon Foundation in San Francisco, an anti-spam activist effort, says unsolicited commercial e-mail provides the perfect vehicle for criminals who run child-porn Web sites to advertise their wares without giving away their identities, especially if they are located overseas.
"While spam does make someone visible, it makes them visible with virtual anonymity,'' he said. Spam artists, especially those engaged in criminal activities, use bogus names and addresses to register their Web sites, making them extremely difficult to trace.
Their Internet provider could help identify a child-porn spammer, "but that's hard to do if it's in Russia,'' Geller said.
However, overseas child-porn Web sites aren't always beyond the reach of law.
In an investigation dubbed "Operation Blue Orchid,'' U.S. Customs earlier this year helped the Moscow police bust a Russian child-porn Web-site operator selling videotapes globally, including in the United States. The case yielded four arrests in the United States and another five in Moscow.
Spam makes anything easier to find, even something as blatantly illegal as child pornography, Collins observed. "Before, if this was something you wanted, you had to look for it,'' she said.
