Over the past six years, roughly 35 adults have been prosecuted for “kidnapping, grooming or sexual harassment,” allegedly involving Discord communications, according to NBC News.
Published Date – Fri 06/23/23 07:20 AM
San Francisco: Discord, a popular chat platform among teens, is used by some adults in hidden communities and chat rooms to abduct children, trade child sexual exploitation material (CSAM), and blackmail minors into sending nude photos, according to media reports. .
Over the past six years, roughly 35 adults have been prosecuted for “kidnapping, grooming or sexual harassment,” allegedly involving Discord communications, according to NBC News.
Of those, at least 15 have pleaded guilty or been sentenced, with “many more” awaiting trial.
These figures only include reported, investigated and prosecuted cases, all of which pose significant challenges for victims and their advocates.
“What we’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg,” said Stephen Sauer, director of the whistleblower line at the Canadian Center for Child Protection (C3P).
Additionally, a teen was taken across state lines in March, raped and found locked in a backyard shed after months of training on Discord, according to police.
In another case, a 22-year-old man abducted a 12-year-old girl after he met her in a video game and baited her on Discord, according to prosecutors.
The report also found another 165 cases, including four criminal rings in which adults were prosecuted for transmitting or receiving CSAM via Discord or for allegedly using the platform to extort children to send pornographic images of themselves, also known as sextortion.
Furthermore, Discord isn’t the only tech platform addressing the ongoing problem of online child exploitation, according to the report, based on numerous reports over the past year.
From 2021 to 2022, CSAM reports on Discord will increase by 474%, according to an analysis of reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
NCMEC senior vice president John Shehan said there has been a rapid increase in child exploitation and abuse content on Discord.
“There is an issue of child exploitation on the platform. It’s undeniable,” Sheehan said.
Launched in 2015, Discord quickly became a hub for online gamers and teens and is now used by more than 150 million people worldwide.
Last month, Discord notified users of a data breach that occurred after third-party support agent accounts were compromised.
According to BleepingComputer, the agent’s support ticket queue was compromised in the security breach, exposing user email addresses, messages exchanged with Discord support, and any attachments sent as part of the ticket.
In April, cybersecurity researchers discovered a new strain of malware distributed on Discord, which has more than 300 million active users.
