Sexual predators are in the crosshairs of the authorities. “I want to tell those who commit this type of criminal behavior that they can be found and sentenced,” warns Jean-Noël Barrot, delegate minister for Digital, in the face of outrage over the teen site Rencontre, a dating application. for youth ages 13-25 used by sexual predators to make advances on minors.
The Delegate Minister announced that he had contacted the prosecutor as a result of certain information, a referral that could lead to the opening of an investigation. But how do the police and gendarmerie manage to find sexual predators on the Internet, particularly on social networks where anonymity seems to reign?
Track user’s IP address
In reality, and contrary to popular belief, anonymity on social networks does not exist. Researchers have various technical and legal means at their disposal to discover the identity of Internet users. The most basic is the IP address.
When a user connects to a social network, the platform records various connection data, including their IP address. This identifier is inseparable from your Internet box and, therefore, from the contract signed on your behalf with an access provider.
Therefore, in order to identify a person hiding behind a pseudonym, the authorities can send a judicial request to a platform to obtain the IP address of the account under investigation. They can then go to the access providers to find out which subscriber this IP address corresponds to. A technique that has already made it possible to identify and convict various cyberbullies who, for example, had targeted artists like Eddy de Pretto or Hoshi.
No obligation to answer
Therefore, cooperation with the different Internet actors is key. “In the fight against online pedocrime there is a lot of international cooperation with other services, information exchanges and reports,” a police officer specializing in the fight against pedocrime explains to Tech&Co.
But this method is not foolproof, and for one simple reason: most of the big platforms (TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) are based abroad, usually in Ireland or London for European users. Therefore, even if they offer their services in France, they cannot be compelled to obey a judicial requisition issued by the French authorities.
Another problem is that several people can share the same box or Internet connection and therefore the same IP address. And if the person uses a VPN, it will be the IP address common to all VPN users that will be recorded by the platforms, so it will be difficult to link it to a specific Internet user. “There is also a kind of technical race” between the tools used by criminals to hide their tracks and those used by the police to track them, a specialized police officer explains to Tech&Co.
infiltration platforms
Authorities can also identify sexual predators through a more traditional investigative method: undercover. On the Internet, researchers can, for example, pose as minors, buyers or sellers of child pornography images, to lure pedophiles who then reveal personal information to them.
A technique used, for example, by police officers from the central group of minor victims, within the Central Office for the repression of violence against people.
A job that is sometimes difficult from a technical point of view (especially on the dark web, where addresses and communities are constantly changing), but also from a psychological point of view. With the WorldA police officer from the central group for minors declared in 2020 about the images of child pornography involved in his investigations: “We can look at them, we don’t get used to it.”
Source: BFM TV
