Affiliate Programs Sometimes
Used Unwittingly For Child Porn: ASACP
LOS ANGELES - Some adult Webmaster affiliate programs
have lately been used as unwitting Laundromats for child porn membership
payments, and they can take steps to prevent that and help authorities
nail the perpetrators, Adult Sites Against Child Pornography warned
November 13.
And the danger, said executive director Joan Irvine,
is that these incidents may cause wrongful accusations against legitimate
affiliate programs by law enforcement.
The child porn fighting group will not reveal the
names of the affected affiliate programs for security reasons, although
Irvine said some well-meaning people often post them on Webmaster
message boards without realizing that can compromise ongoing law
enforcement investigations and let the actual child porners wiggle
off the hook.
But ASACP said their compliance and site review
manager investigates reports of suspect sites and passes validated
reports to the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, but while tracking the leads he discovered some affiliate
programs unaware they were being used for child porn payments.
A child porn operator sends a mass e-mail asking
surfers to visit such a site, with the URL on a free host, but the
child porn seeker will arrive and be prompted to join by paying
at a non-child porn adult Website where the child porn operator
is an affiliate, most often without the affiliate program's knowledge,
ASACP said.
"The CP seeker is instructed to send the username
and password for the adult website to an e-mail address where the
CP operator can verify that the CP seeker has joined the adult Website,"
ASACP quoted their compliance/review manager, who does not disclose
his or her identity for security reasons. "After verification,
an e-mail is sent to the CP seeker containing login information
to the actual CP Website."
ASACP will contact affiliate programs to get information
on the offending affiliates or to open direct communication between
the program and the FBI, with the FBI sometimes asking the affiliate
program operators not to de-activate the suspect affiliates until
the investigations are completed, Irvine said.
Irvine said ASACP only recently learned that such
child porn operators were trying to use such affiliate programs
for membership payments, and between working with the FBI on specific
situations and various comments ASACP became aware of on some Webmaster
message boards, the group decided the time was now to reveal and
discuss the problem and possible solutions and protections.
"We've been able to determine the tips to
give people, now that that we've learned more about how they're
doing it, and we wanted to be certain to share that with the professionals
in the industry," she told AVN Online. "A lot of people
just weren't aware of this. Once we saw it was starting to become
a pattern, as we continued investigating these reports, and once
we were able to identify the things people can be doing and looking
for, we wanted to get this information out to the professional adult
site industry."
She said adult Web professionals "would be
shocked, be horrified, about this situation. Because everybody's
doing so much to follow the laws in spirit and in letter, and doing
whatever they can. And the fact that some of these depraved people
are using these affiliates can invalidate that effort."
You can protect your affiliate program with these
simple steps, ASACP said:
* - Be sure none of your affiliates uses any terms
which might suggest child porn.
* - Place a disclaimer on your pay site join page to warn surfers
against joining to gain access to other sites.
* - Inform them their credit card, e-mail, and IP address are logged
and will be turned over to the FBI for prosecution in the event
of any violation.
* - Check your logs for signups that never log in as members.
* - Comply with ASACP Best Practices policy, which you can see on
the ASACP Website.
ASACP urges affiliate programs not to post suspect
child porn sites on public Webmaster message boards, because the
FBI will often ask affiliate programs who report suspect affiliates
not to deactivate them until the investigation in question is finished
and arrests are made. To report suspect affiliates or any suspect
Websites, visit ASACP or the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children on the Web, or contact your local FBI office.
Charles Farrar
November 13, 2003
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