Several sites accept crypto for child sexual abuse

There are many dark corners out there on the web, and new data sheds some light on one of them: The number of sites that accept cryptocurrency as a payment for child sexual abuse material has almost doubled every year since 2018, according to Internet Watch Foundation.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a UK-based non-profit organization that seeks to minimize the spread of sexually abusive content on the Internet, and the IWF found 250,000 websites that contained child sexual abuse material in 2021. Of these, at least 1,014 accepted cryptocurrency to get access or purchase images and videos of children being sexually abused. In 2018, 81 locations were found. In 2019, 221 locations were found. In 2020, 468 websites were found. It is doubling every year.

“We are seeing cryptocurrency being used to pay for the distribution of child abuse images and sexual exploitation online, with perpetrators believing they can hide behind the anonymity of these virtual currencies,” said Detective Inspector Darren Young, from Online Child Sexual Abuse. and Exploitation Unit at UK Metropolitan Police as cited by IWF.

As a result, the IWF has announced the formation of a crypto entity to tackle this growing problem, and the foundation says it has already received requests for information from law enforcement departments from New Zealand to Austria. This crypto unit scans the internet for material about sexual abuse of children, and documents all information relating to media, website, server location and payment methods.

“If criminals are trying to make money selling these images, we note everything we see on a website or forum’s payment pages, such as the wording used, the virtual currency and the amount, whether it’s a daily, weekly or annual fee, and cryptocurrency -the wallet address of the provider,” said an anonymous crypto entity analyst.

The IWF says so Coin base— one of the largest crypto exchange platforms — has apparently used the nonprofit’s data in the past to sniff out potentially illegal activity on its platform — identifying more than 6,500 potential bad actors. Coinbase was also able to find and shut down website operators who were distributing CSAM.

Cryptocurrency as a whole has been involved in many controversy and criminal activity— either directly or indirectly — but its use to buy media depicting child sexual abuse is probably the darkest example.