Technology By Karen Pauls, Cameron MacIntosh 481 Views

Woman who spent years scrubbing explicit video from internet urges tech firms to make it easier to remove

She was only 14 when she was groomed to have virtual sex with an older man she met on social media. 

She had no idea he was recording it and that she would spend years suffering the fallout online and in her real life. 

"It [the video] is like the head of the hydra. You cut one off, and then there's three more," said the woman, who is from a large Canadian city and whose identity is being concealed out of concern for her safety.

She recalls what it was like, as a frightened teenage girl, to realize the video of her was publicly available.

"I honestly thought every single day was going to be either the last day I'm alive or the last day I have any social life at all because it felt like I was on the precipice of my life — exploding every day," she said.

Child protection advocates say this woman is just one of the thousands whose illegal, underage graphic videos and images are being shared online around the world — and who say they are finding it hard to report so-called child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and have it removed.

Distribution underreported

More than 1,400 children were lured using a computer last year, according to a Statistics Canada report of police-reported cybercrime. That compares to 850 in 2015. 

There were 4,174 cases of making or distributing child porn reported to police in 2019, compared to 850 in 2015. 



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