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For the first time ever, on January 31, five Big Tech CEOs from Meta, X, Snap, TikTok and Discord are being called to testify on their failures to protect children online. Pressure has been mounting especially over the last year as the Senate Judiciary Committee has introduced several bipartisan bills to help stop the exploitation of kids online.

Child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is any content that depicts sexually explicit activities involving a child. This devastating crime has severe and lifelong consequences for survivors, and the online sharing of this material traumatizes victims long after the abuse has ended. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an exponential increase in online sexual exploitation and abuse of children (known as OSEAC). To give a scale of this epidemic, in 2019, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) received 16.9 million reports of CSAM to their CyberTipline. In 2022, that number nearly doubled, to over 32 million reports, marking the highest number of reports ever received in one year.

Read more here.

Apple still allows child sexual abuse images and videos on iCloud and we believe it’s time to escalate our efforts. Our goal is to bring attention to the issue, urging Apple to take concrete steps to address the problem ahead of the Super Bowl.

We’re asking you to join us in amplifying the stories of those affected by Apple’s negligence. We’ve put together an Action Toolkit that includes information on how you can contribute, share our message, and play a vital role in our campaign this weekend.

Commercial Link: https://bit.ly/3vR4cLj

Please use this Toolkit and raise awareness of your “social media” platforms. Here are some examples:

# protectchildrennotabuse

We need your help.
We are sending a message to Apple that we are here to demand change and are not going anywhere. Ahead of
Apple’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, we’re amplifying the stories of survivors to demonstrate the human impact
behind the status quo.

Repost from Heat Initiative on your preferred platform. Talk about it with your friends, families, and networks.

– I join survivors of child sexual abuse and the @HeatInitiative in holding @Apple
accountable for CSAM stored on iCloud.
–I am joining @HeatInitiative in demanding that @Apple: 1) Stop the spread of
child sexual abuse images and videos on iCloud 2) Create a robust reporting
mechanism for users to report child sexual abuse images and videos to Apple.
Learn more at ProtectChildrenNotAbuse.org.D
–Did you see the @HeatInitiative commercial calling on @Apple to prioritize child
safety? Join @HeatInitiative in telling Apple leadership that it’s time to act by
signing their petition here:

A form of cybercrime called “financial sextortion” is rapidly rising in North America and Australia, with a major portion driven by a non-organized cybercriminal group in West Africa who call themselves “Yahoo Boys,” according to a new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).

Sextortion is “a crime that involves adults coercing kids and teens into sending explicit images online,” according to the FBI. The criminals threaten their victims with wide distribution of the explicit images, including to the victims’ friends and family, unless the victims pay them, repeatedly, through a variety of peer-to-peer payment apps, cryptocurrency transfers and gift cards.

NCRI, a nonprofit, found cybercriminals used the social apps Instagram, Snapchat and Wizz to find and connect with their marks.

Read more here.

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Keeping Kids Safe: A Roadmap for Parents, Teachers & Others

Did you know that children are at risk of sexual abuse, now more than ever?

While your children are ‘playing on their laptops’ online grooming could be occuring?

Would some tips on how to protect them be useful?

Sexual abuse and grooming of children across the world are both frightening realities, and ways to manage this are desperately needed.

This roadmap is for the parents, teachers, grandparents, and front-line staff everywhere. Resources are instrumental in combatting these predators, and children need practical tools to use.

This book has been written by a survivor of 16 years of child sexual abuse and trafficking and is considered a masterpiece.

Easy to follow, invaluable to use, this is one roadmap you will need to study.

Learn more here and how to buy your copy. 

A brutal Venezuelan street gang that controls sex trafficking in South America by branding women and young girls with tattoos behind their ears is exporting its violence to the US, according to reports.

Tren de Aragua, which is named for the Venezuelan state of Aragua, is now operating in South Florida following the arrest this week of a suspect wanted in a brutal murder in Miami, according to reports.

Yurwin Salazar Maita was charged with the November murder of a retired Venezuelan cop outside a hotel near the Miami airport. Miami-Dade authorities say Salazar is linked to the brutal gang.

Tren de Aragua is led by Hector Guerrero Flores, a 40 year-old fugitive who controlled drug trafficking and human trafficking while he was incarcerated in one of the Venezuela’s maximum security prisons for more than a decade. He escaped in September, and his whereabouts are unknown. Arrest warrants in several Latin American countries have been issued for Guerrero, who is known by his moniker, “El Nino Guerrero.”

More than 90% of child sexual abuse imagery found on the internet is now self-generated, according to the charity responsible for finding and removing such material.

The Internet Watch Foundation said that it discovered self-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) featuring children under 10 on more than 100,000 webpages in the last year. That figure is an increase of 66% on the year before. In total, a record 275,655 webpages were confirmed to contain CSAM, the IWF said, an increase of 8%. The new data prompted a renewed attack on end-to-end encryption from the UK government, backed by the IWF.

The rise in imagery discovered and removed is not necessarily problematic, said the charity’s chief executive Susie Hargreaves, as some of the increase could be accounted for by better detection.

Read more here.