Michael Oghia was on a Zoom conference call with about 20 activists last week when someone hacked into the presenter's screen to show a video with explicit pornographic content involving an infant (child sexual abuse).
“It took me a moment to process it,” said Oghia, advocacy and engagement officer at the Global Forum on Media Development. “At first I thought it was porn, but as soon as I clicked it, I shut down my computer. What the hell did I just see?”
Oghia's call was hacked and images of child sexual abuse emerged. He is not sure if it was a video or a live stream. Understandably, his shock was great.
Oghia's experience is an extreme example of the increase in such incidents during the coronavirus pandemic, as reported by people monitoring and trying to stop child abuse and the spread of child pornography.
And with mitigation efforts limited by the pandemic, distributors of child sexual exploitation material are becoming bolder, using major platforms to attract audiences. Some platforms are warning users that when they report questionable or illegal content, the company may not be able to respond quickly.
Child sexual abuse image distributors are easily sharing links to such material on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using coded language to evade companies’ detection tools, according to child safety and law enforcement experts. At the same time, reports of child sexual exploitation activity to online hotlines are increasing by an average of 30% globally, according to InHope, a network of 47 national online hotlines.
Reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the organization that receives online tips in the United States, including all Silicon Valley tech platforms, have more than doubled, from 983,734 reports in March 2019 to 2,027,520 reports in March.
Zoom said it was looking into what happened in Oghia’s call and that any child abuse on its platform is “devastating and horrifying” and prohibited by company policies. The company said it uses a combination of tools, including automated ones, to proactively identify accounts that may be sharing child sexual exploitation material and notifies law enforcement when necessary. Zoom now requires a password for all meetings. Oghia’s meeting did not require a password.
The incident occurred at a time when popular social media, video and messaging platforms have been flooded with child sexual exploitation material. The COVID-19 pandemic means people are spending more time online at home, leading to a greater demand for this type of content – child sexual abuse.
“Activity peaks on the platforms where it takes place and spikes during the holiday season when people are off work,” said Brian Herrick, assistant chief of the FBI for child and human trafficking.
He confirmed that “a lot of activity” took place in coded conversations on general social media platforms, but noted that the “most extreme child sexual abuse material” was shared on the Dark Web.
Most technology companies use automated tools to identify images and videos that have already been categorized as child sexual exploitation material, but they struggle to identify new, unknown material and rely heavily on user reports.
