Policy trying to wage war on child pornography are struggling to combat new challenges brought on by the rise of many messaging services such as Kik and Snapchat that have risen to become popular among children and teenagers and are becoming a target for predators.
Kik Messenger, based in Waterloo, Ontario, launched four years ago and has since attracted 200 million registered users, most of them teenagers. It's major feature that teenagers love is its anonymity.
Unlike some messaging services such as WhatsApp, which require a functioning mobile number, Kik users can sign up anonymously. This has given rise to an entire subculture of bad actors seeking to prey on children and using the anonymity as a way of hiding from detection or tracking.
Last fall, a Texas court sentences Gregory Bogomol, a former school teacher, to 60 years in prison for preying on dozens of children using social media and other services including Kik. In 2014, a 45 year old man from Kitchener was convicted and added to the national sex offenders registry for luring children and sending pictures of his genitalia using Kik.
"A predator is the fisherman, and Kik right now is the pond that's stocked with all the fish," Lieutenant James Bacon of Fairfax County Police's Child Exploitation Unit in Virginia told NBC earlier this month following the arrest of a 14-year-old boy accused of creating a contest to generate child pornography.
Kik, for its part, claims it is doing its best to counter the threats of these predators. The company recently announced plans to use Microsoft's PhotoDNA software to moderate images users share and block any attempts to share child pornography, as well as report the offender to police. It also plans to join the Virtual Global Taskforce, which is a group consisting of businesses, individuals, child protective agencies and international police services in an effort to put a stop to this use of its service.
"Child exploitation is an industry-wide problem that has been around since the beginning of the Internet. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, and many others face the same issues, sometimes to a greater extent," Rod McLeod, a public relations spokesman for Kik Interactive Inc., wrote in a statement.
"This was entirely a safety move, as the biggest risk was to users, specifically teenagers," Mr. McLeod said, adding there was no legal or other pressure to make these changes."We hope it'll improve the overall experience of the app by removing potentially dangerous users from Kik."
Some services still choose not to employ any type of content scanning in an effort to stop these types of exploitations. Japan's Line, one of Kik's competitors with 500 million registered users, says it does not do any type of scanning whatsoever.
"Some investors don't seem to care about criminal risk, don't think about it, or see it as a place, given the smaller investor pool, [with an opportunity] as opportunities for outsized returns," said Christian Lassonde, managing partner with Toronto-based Impression Ventures.
"I guess it all comes down to how flexible your moral fibre is. ... I believe there are enough good deals out there you don't need to get your hands dirty."
