Amazon's encrypted messaging app Wickr is being used by criminals to exploit and abuse children. Some uses would even exchange indecent images of children and underage teens.
Wickr is Used to Abuse Children
According to NBC, the evidence of these crimes against children on Amazon's Wickr app is circulating online, especially on the dark web.
Several online threads, police reports, and anti-exploitation activists have pointed out that users would link their Wickr account handles on their Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr accounts to promote and share the illegal images,
Although Wickr is not the only online platform that is being used to distribute disturbing images, it appears that Amazon is doing little to prevent the problem.
According to the data gathered by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children or NCMEC, Amazon's lack of action is why pedophiles are attracted to the platform since they know they won't be detected.
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John Shehan, the Vice President of NCMEC, said in a statement that Wickr needs to do more to help prevent child sexual abuse materials from being traded on the platform.
Under the United States law, online communication services like Wickr are required to report child sexual abuse content to NCMEC, according to World News Era.
Despite several proofs presented by activists, law enforcement, and online communities proving that there is a problem with Wickr, Amazon has only self-reported 15 cases of child sexual abuse imagery, according to OODA Loop.
NBC News' Investigation
NBC News reviewed court documents from 72 state and federal prosecutions involving child pornography. The defendant in the case admitted to using Wickr in several countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, and used private and public databases and search engines to pass the images around.
Almost all the prosecution that NBC News reviewed has resulted in a conviction. Wickr barely cooperated in the trials of the cases where the app was involved in the circulation of child pornography.
The only cases where Wickr was forced to get involved were when they were legally obligated to provide information via a search warrant.
Over 25% of the prosecutions came from undercover operations conducted by law enforcement on the tech platform.
How Other Apps Are Handling Child Sexual Abuse
Other popular social media apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, all of which are under Meta, use algorithms to scan unencrypted text and media for signs of child pornography.
In 2021, Meta flagged more than 22 million posts on Facebook, more than 3 million posts on Instagram, and more than 1 million posts on WhatsApp and reported them to NCMEC.
Comparing this to Wickr's 15 cases reported to the authorities, it is clear that Amazon is not taking any proactive efforts to combat this problem.
An Amazon spokesperson released a statement regarding the problem with Wickr and said that the company is doing the best it can to prevent child sexual abuse material on the app.
The spokesperson added that Wickr has a strict Terms of Use that prohibits illegal activity and that the company immediately reports any illegal behavior and cooperates with law enforcement to resolve a case.
Related Article: Australia's Police Chief Blasts Facebook for Aiding Rape by Letting Paedophiles Hide Behind Its End-to-End Encryption
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Written by Sophie Webster
