FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

How to Bust Webcam Sex Predators by Posing as a Computer-Generated Girl

An e-sting in the Netherlands unmasked the identities of 1,000 predators with "Sweetie", a CG-"girl" that on screen looks and moves like a real 10-year-old Filipino girl.

A children's rights group in the Netherlands has pulled off an impressive online sting to unmask the identities of 1,000 predators who exploited young girls in webcam sex chat rooms.

The group, Terre des Hommes, developed a computer-generated virtual "girl" dubbed "Sweetie" that on screen looks and moves like a real 10-year-old Filipino girl. Working remotely out of a warehouse in Amsterdam, the group signed in to public sex cam chat rooms posing as Sweetie, who was solicited by more than 20,000 predators over the course of 10 weeks.

Advertisement

The virtual girl, operated by an app that controlled every movement and response, chatted with predators just long enough to collect tidbits of information that could be used to trace their identities. Then armed with names, addresses, photos, and videos, the sting operators turned to Google and Facebook—they didn't hack into any computers—to work out the identities of the anonymous pediphilles. Terre des Hommes turned over the names of 1,000 predators to law enforcement yesterday—most from the US, Britain, and India.

The group wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to track down webcam sex predators, to encourage law enforcement to proactively go after them. It posted a video explaining their process on YouTube and is now collecting signatures for an online petition to pressure governments to do more to stop the growing phenomenon.

Webcam sex tourism is quickly spreading in developing countries, the group warns. According to UN and FBI estimates, there are 750,000 pediphilles online at any moment, and Terre des Hommes estimates tens of thousands of kids as young as six years old are exploited behind sex cams in the Philippines alone—usually forced into the act by adults or extreme poverty.

The children don't go to police and the crimes are hard to prove, so proactive policing is needed to stop the problem from growing out of control and becoming, like child porn, a multi-billion dollar industry in the hands of criminal gangs, the group warned.

"The child predators doing this now feel that the law doesn’t apply to them," Terre des Hommes director of projects Hans Guyt said yesterday. "The Internet is free, but not lawless.”