AMAZON’S encrypted chat app, Wickr, is filled with child sex abuse images and little is being done to tackle this, experts claim.
Criminals are using Wickr Me, a messaging app owned by Amazon, to seamlessly exploit and abuse children, according to a new report by NBC.
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For their investigation, NBC looked at court records, online threads, and police reports, as well as talked to law enforcement and anti-exploitation activists.
Evidence of these crimes against children on Wickr, NBC said, is littered across the internet and dark web.
People have been to linking their Wickr account handles on Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter threads, to promote and share this illegal material.
While Wickr is not the only platform that is being used to distribute this type of content, it appears relatively little is being done by Amazon to tackle and prevent the issue, experts say.
“Wickr needs to do more in regards to identifying and taking steps to prevent child sexual abuse material being traded on their platform,” said John Shehan, vice president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
Under U.S. law, online communication services are required to report known or discovered child sexual abuse content to NCMEC.
And despite multiple experts saying there’s clearly a prominent community on Wickr dedicated to trading such material, the company has only self-reported 15 instances of child sexual abuse imagery.
Other messaging apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, which are all owned by parent company Meta, use algorithms to scan unencrypted text and media for signs of child sexual abuse imagery.
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In 2021, Meta flagged content in the millions and reported it to NCMEC – Facebook made 22,118,952 reports, Instagram made 3,393,654 reports, and WhatsApp made 1,372,696 reports.
“It’s very clear that [Wickr is] not taking any proactive efforts on their own to identify this type of activity,” Shehan said.
An Amazon Web Services spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “committed to preventing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in every segment of our business, including Wickr.”
They added that Wickr “maintains strict Terms of Use that clearly prohibit illegal activity.”
“We act quickly on reports of illegal behavior, respond immediately to requests from law enforcement, and take the appropriate actions.”
The Sun has reached out to Amazon for comment but has not heard back at the time of publishing.
