Trinity Mount Ministries

Showing posts with label Internet Safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet Safety. Show all posts

Friday, August 14, 2015

Worried About Your Child’s Safety Online? Watch This:





Do you know how to keep your kids safe online? FBI cybersecurity experts joined CBS2 today to share advice on protecting and monitoring kids online. With the internet so easily accessible,kids can post content anytime, anywhere. Here FBI special agents share cyber safety tips for parents.
Source: http://goo.gl/zLUh14





 http://www.TrinityMount.Info

Friday, July 17, 2015

DOJ - New Hampshire Man Charged in “Sextortion” Scheme Targeting Minors:

Department of Justice: Office of Public Affairs - JUSTICE NEWS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Thursday, July 16, 2015

New Hampshire Man Charged with Computer Hacking and Cyberstalking in “Sextortion” Scheme Targeting Minors:
A New Hampshire man was charged with remotely hacking into the social media, email and online shopping accounts of almost a dozen minor females and threatening that he would delete, deface, and make purchases from the accounts unless the victims sent him sexually explicit photographs of themselves.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Acting U.S. Attorney Donald Feith of the District of New Hampshire and Special Agent in Charge Lisa A. Quinn of the U.S. Secret Service’s Boston Field Office made the announcement.
“Predators troll the Internet in search of vulnerable children to extort for their own sexual gratification,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. “The Criminal Division and our law enforcement partners are committed to protecting our youth from sextortion and to finding and prosecuting wrongdoers lurking in the shadows of the Internet.”
“Individuals who would take advantage of today’s modern technologies to entice and then threaten minors deserve special investigative and prosecutorial attention,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Feith. “We will continue to work with law enforcement, technology specialists and education professionals to teach minors about the dangers of placing personal information in social media and the need to report threats of this nature so that we may bring these predators to justice.”
“Child sexual exploitation is an alarming problem in our society,” said Special Agent in Charge Quinn. “The Secret Service is committed to work closely with our law enforcement partners to identify and prosecute these predators.”
Ryan J. Vallee, 21, of Franklin, New Hampshire, was charged by indictment with 10 counts of making interstate threats, two counts of computer hacking to steal information, seven counts of computer hacking to extort and seven counts of aggravated identity theft. Vallee is scheduled to make his initial appearance today at 4:30 p.m. EDT in the District of New Hampshire.
According to the indictment, from 2012 through November 2013, Vallee, using various aliases that included “Seth Williams” and “James McRow,” engaged in a computer hacking and “sextortion” campaign designed to coerce numerous minor females to provide him with sexually explicit photographs of themselves. He allegedly hacked into and took control of the girls’ online accounts – including their e-mail, Facebook and Instagram accounts – and threatened to delete the accounts, and defaced the contents of some of the accounts. Vallee also allegedly hacked into the girls’ Amazon.com accounts and, using their stored payment card information and shipping addresses, ordered items of a sexual nature and had them shipped to the girls’ homes. Vallee also allegedly obtained sexually explicit photographs of the girls and their friends and distributed them to others.
The indictment alleges that, in conjunction with his harassment campaign, Vallee sent communications to his victims, usually using a text message spoofing or anonymizing service, threatening to continue his attacks unless the victims provided sexually explicit photographs of themselves. The indictment alleges that, when victims refused to comply with Vallee’s demands and begged him to leave them alone, Vallee responded with threats to inflict additional harm.
The charges and allegations contained in an indictment are merely accusations. A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
The case is being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service, with substantial assistance from the Belmont, New Hampshire, Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney Mona Sedky and Trial Attorney Sumon Dantiki of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Arnold H. Huftalen of the District of New Hampshire.

 http://www.justice.gov/

 http://www.TrinityMount.Info

Friday, July 10, 2015

Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) Presentation




The Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) seeks to build an effective, international partnership of law enforcement agencies, non government organizations and industry to help protect children from online child abuse.

The objectives of the VGT are:

- to make the internet a safer place
- to identify, locate and help children at risk
- to hold perpetrators appropriately to account

The VGT logo reaffirms the VGT's purpose that the child is the key focus of the VGT and the eye is always roaming the internet, across international borders, watching over our children to keep them safe online.

Online child sexual abuse is a global crime and so it is vital that it is policed at a global level.

As a global response to this global problem, a number of VGT law enforcement agencies have come together across the digital divide to combat online child sexual abuse worldwide.

The successes of the VGT relies on the strong international partnerships involved. The VGT comprises the following members:
The development of international relationships, networks and communications amongst industry and non government organisations is crucial to the VGT’s efforts to investigate online crime and combat online child exploitation.

For more information, please visit: http://www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com

 http://www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com


Trinity Mount Ministries assists in locating Missing Children and helps to stop Child Abuse.
http://www.TrinityMount.Info

 http://www.TrinityMount.Info

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The FBI - Help Us Locate Additional Victims of an Online Predator:

What is sextortion? A special agent defines the crime.

Ashley Reynolds was a happy 14-year-old who loved sports, did well in school academically and socially, and enjoyed keeping a journal she intended her “future self” to read. But what happened in the summer of 2009 was so devastating that she couldn’t bring herself to record it in her diary—or speak about it to anyone.
She had become the victim of sextortion, a growing Internet crime in which young girls and boys are often targeted. Her life was being turned upside down by an online predator who took advantage of her youth and vulnerability to terrorize her by demanding that she send him sexually explicit images of herself.
After several months, Ashley’s parents discovered what was happening and contacted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). Ashley and her parents later supported the FBI investigation that led to the arrest of 26-year-old Lucas Michael Chansler, who last year pled guilty to multiple counts of child pornography production and was sent to prison for 105 years—but not before he used the Internet to victimize nearly 350 teenage girls. The majority of those youngsters have not yet been identified.
That’s why the FBI is requesting the public’s help—and why Ashley has come forward to tell her story—so that Chansler’s victims can be located and will know, as Special Agent Larry Meyer said, “that this dark period of their lives is over.”
Meyer, a veteran agent in the FBI’s Jacksonville Division who investigates crimes against children, explained that 109 of Chansler’s victims have been identified and contacted so far, leaving approximately 250 teens “who have not had closure and who probably haven’t obtained counseling and other help they might need.” He noted that Ashley is a brave person with a supportive family “and has been able to use this experience to make her stronger.” Unfortunately, that has not been the case for all the girls, some of whom have dropped out of school and tried to end their lives.
Chansler, who was studying to become a pharmacist, used multiple personas and dozens of fake screen names—such as “HELLOthere” and “goodlookingguy313”—to dupe girls from 26 U.S. states, Canada, and the United Kingdom. And he used sophisticated techniques to keep anyone from learning his true identity.
Pretending to be 15-year-old boys—all handsome and all involved in skateboarding—he trolled popular online hangouts to strike up relationships with teenage girls. In one instance on Stickam, a now-defunct live-streaming video website, evidence seized from his computer showed four girls all exposing their breasts. “The girls are apparently having a sleepover, and Chansler contacted one of them through a random online chat,” Meyer said. “These girls thought they were having a video chat session with a 15-year-old boy that they would never see or hear from again, so they are all exposing themselves, not realizing that he is doing a screen capture and then he’s coming back later—very often in a different persona—saying, ‘Hey I’ve got these pictures of you, and if you don’t want these sent to all your Myspace friends or posted on the Internet, you are going to do all of these naked poses for me.’”
Don’t Become a Victim of Sextortion
Special Agent Larry Meyer and other investigators experienced in online child sexual exploitation cases offer these simple tips for young people who might think that sextortion could never happen to them:
- Whatever you are told online may not be true, which means the person you think you are talking to may not be the person you really are talking to.
- Don’t send pictures to strangers. Don’t post any pictures of yourself online that you wouldn’t show to your grandmother. “If you only remember that,” Meyer said, “you are probably going to be safe.”
- If you are being targeted by an online predator, tell someone. If you feel you can’t talk to a parent, tell a trusted teacher or counselor. You can also call the FBI, the local police, or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline.
- You might be afraid or embarrassed to talk with your parents, but most likely they will understand. “One of the common denominators in the Chansler case,” Meyer noted, “was that parents wished their daughters had told them sooner. They were very understanding and sympathetic. They realized their child was being victimized.”
“It went from what would be relatively benign pictures to fulfilling Chansler’s perverted desires,” Meyer said, adding that while adults know that a young person’s life is only beginning in high school, “to a 13- or 14-year-old girl, thinking that all her friends or her parents might see a picture of her exposing her breasts, the fear was enough to make them comply with Chansler’s demands, believing they had no better options.”
When FBI agents interviewed Chansler after his arrest, they asked why he selected that age group. “One of the comments he made,” Meyer said, “was that older girls wouldn’t fall for his ploy.”
Ashley fell for Chansler’s ploy in late 2008 when she was 14 years old. She was contacted online by someone who claimed to be a teenage boy with embarrassing sexual pictures of her. His screen name was CaptainObvious, and he threatened to send Ashley’s pictures to all her Myspace friends if she didn’t send him a topless image of herself. Without considering the consequences, she sent it. She didn’t think the boy knew who she was or anything else about her. Nothing more happened until the summer of 2009, when Chansler’s persona messaged again, threatening to post her topless picture on the Internet if she didn’t send him more explicit images.
She ignored him at first, but then he texted her on her cell phone. He knew her phone number and presumably where she lived. Somehow he must have hacked information from her social media pages. Chansler was relentless. He badgered her for pictures and continued to threaten. The thought of her reputation being ruined—and disappointing her parents—made Ashley finally give in to her tormenter.
The next few months were a nightmare as Ashley complied with Chansler’s demands. She was trapped and felt she couldn’t talk to anyone. She kept thinking if she sent more pictures, the monster at the other end of the computer would finally leave her alone. But it only got worse—until the day her mother discovered the images on her computer.
“I just remember breaking down and crying, trying to get my dad not to call the police,” Ashley said, “because I knew that I would end up in jail or something because I complied and I sent him the pictures even though I didn’t want to. I tried to think rationally, like this guy was threatening me. But I sent him the pictures, so that’s breaking the law, isn’t it? I am under age and I am sending him naked pictures of me. I didn’t want to go to jail.”
Still, she was relieved that she didn’t have to keep her secret any longer. And her parents were supportive.
Ashley’s mother did some research and contacted the NCMEC’s CyberTipline. An analyst researching the case was able to tie one of the screen names used to sextort Ashley to another case in a different state and realized the predator most likely had multiple victims. Eventually, FBI and NCMEC analysts were able to pinpoint an Internet account in Florida where the threats were originating, and that information was passed to FBI agents who work closely with NCMEC in child exploitation investigations.
When investigators executed a search warrant at Chansler’s Jacksonville house and examined his computer, they found thousands of images and videos of child pornography. They also found folders labeled “Done” and “Prospects” that contained detailed information about the nearly 350 teens he had extorted online.
Meyer and the Jacksonville Crimes Against Children Task Force analyzed the images of the girls to identify and locate them. One victim was located through a picture of her and her friends standing in front of a plate glass window at their school. Reflected in the glass was the name of the school, which led to her identification. Another victim was found through a radio station banner seen in a video hanging on her bedroom wall. The station’s call letters led to a city and, eventually, to the victim. More than 250 investigators, analysts, victim specialists, child forensic interviewers, and community child advocacy centers were involved in locating and interviewing the known victims.
But approximately 250 victims are still unidentified and may have no idea that Chansler was arrested and sent to jail.
“It’s important that we find these girls so that they don’t have to be looking over their shoulder, wondering if this guy is still out there and is he looking for them and is he going to be coming back,” Meyer explained, adding that “some of these girls, now young women, need assistance. Many probably have never told anyone what they went through.”
Ashley, now 20, is doing what she can to get the word out about sextortion so that all of Chansler’s victims can be identified and other girls don’t make the mistakes that she made. “This ended for me,” she said, but for many of Chansler’s victims, “this never ended for them.”
When Meyer began working crimes against children cases eight years ago, he visited freshman and sophomore high school classes to talk about Internet safety. “Now,” he said, “we are going to fourth and fifth grade because kids are getting on the Internet at younger ages.”
He added, “We know that youngsters don’t always make sound decisions. Today, with a smartphone or digital camera, an individual can take an inappropriate picture of themselves and 10 seconds later have it sent to someone. Once that picture is gone,” he said, “you lose all control over it, and what took 10 seconds can cause a lifetime of regret.”
For her part, Ashley hopes that talking about what she went through will resonate with young girls. “If it hits close to home, maybe they will understand. High school girls never think it will happen to them,” she said. “I never thought this would happen to me, but it did.”


 http://www.TrinityMount.Info

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The Dark Web: A haven for pedophiles beyond the Internet

by Jerome Elam

WASHINGTON, June 6, 2015 – It was November of 2014 in the quiet suburban neighborhood as the light of an early Saturday morning began to peek through the clouds and the day found its beginning. The quaint three-bedroom home on the corner blended in with the rest of the neighborhood, as the freshly painted beige exterior glistened in the early morning sun. The neatly trimmed yard was littered with the toys of young children, and a brown mini van missing a hubcap was parked in the driveway.

Suddenly the screech of tires broke the landscape of silence as three black Chevy Suburbans with blacked windows came to an abrupt halt in front of the house. A group of men wearing black body armor and matching helmets formed a line behind two others holding a large black battering ram as they the disengaged the safety of their automatic weapons. As the group advanced on the front door, a loud crash echoed as the force of the battering ram met the front door and splinters of wood rained down on the group.

Inside the house a middle-aged man sat at a computer in the darkness as images of young children flashed across the screen and the video streamed across the secret network that made him invisible to the rest of the world. Seconds later, he was lying on the floor handcuffed, and law enforcement agents carefully began to collect the evidence they needed to bring down a global ring of pedophiles.

The investigation had taken over a year and had led agents into the darkest depths of a world few know about, a world where terrorists, drug dealers and pedophiles roam freely. Known as “the Dark Web,” it is a series on non-indexed sites around the world that create an abyss 500 times larger than the Internet you and I surf every day.

Tor is free software that allows a user to browse, send e-mail and chat anonymously. It also allows users access to the “Dark Web.” A 2014 study by University of Portsmouth computer science researcher Gareth Owen discovered a startling 80 percent of the traffic to sites on the Dark Web were associated with child pornography.

In an interview with CBS News, Greg Virgin, who formerly worked with the National Security Agency and is now a cyber security consultant to children’s rights groups commented, “It was just an awful realization, discovering there were tens of thousands of people who are not only trading child pornography, but planning to exploit children.”

On the Dark Web, pedophile “shopping” sites advertise children for sale as well as take “orders” for specific age groups. Virgin said, “We found one site where users openly advertised the ages of the children they were interested in. The average youngest age they were seeking for girls was zero years old. And the average age for boys was one.”

A 2014 Business Insider article by James Cook that documents a pedophile fundraising site for child exploitation videos further emphasizes the growth of child exploitation on the Dark Web. Pedophiles created a twisted form of the popular fundraising tool “Kickstarter,” which collected funds to exploit children and then share the videos on the Dark Web for free.

The FBI is rumored to have taken down several of the servers used by pedophiles on the Dark Web in 2013. But, according to Virgin, “”The demand is picked up very quickly by other sites, and the sites are replaced very quickly, usually by a stronger, better site.”

The Dark Web is a Rubik’s cube of depravity. For those who know how to unlock its many hidden doors, there is no limit to the horrific nightmares children are forced to live. Internet browsers such as Internet Explorer and Google Chrome scan roughly 5 percent of the space that is reached by Tor, which plunges deeply into the hidden world. Internet privacy enthusiasts attempt to deflect criticism of the use of Tor and the presence of child exploitation on the Dark Web by saying the numbers are inflated.

A computer hacker who spoke under the condition of anonymity noted, “There are doors within the Dark Web hidden so well that only a handful of experts could find them, and even then it would take some time to uncover the warren of passageways deep beneath the surface.”

Tor began with a much nobler purpose that still finds its place in the expanding landscape of illicit users on the Dark Web. It was envisioned as a way to allow journalists and those living under oppressive governments a means of communication that would protect their identities and their lives.

Created by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Tor began in the 1990s as a way for the U.S. Intelligence Community to communicate securely. In 1997, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) further developed Tor and in 2004, the Naval Research Laboratory released the code for Tor under a free license. In 2006 a non-profit called “The Tor Project” was created by a group of computer scientists in Massachusetts that maintains Tor in association with several other organizations.

Law enforcement has been fighting back against those who exploit Tor for darker purposes. In 2013, Irish authorities arrested 28-year-old Eric Eoin Marques, who is thought responsible for Freedom Hosting, an anonymous hosting company rife with child exploitation.

After Marques’ arrest, a panic rushed through the pedophile community, when the U.S. National Security Agency released a virus onto the Freedom Hosting website to track and uncover the pedophiles lurking on the Dark Web. Numerous child exploitation forums were deleted in response to law enforcement’s infiltration of their twisted domain, and warnings temporarily drove pedophiles further underground.

The Dark Web interests law enforcement not only because of its large community of pedophiles but also because organized crime, terrorists, money laundering and the illegal drug trade have proliferated in its dark abyss.

For example, the infamous “Silk Road” site provided a marketplace of illicit drugs for sale on the Dark Web. Run by an administrator known only as the “Dread Pirate Roberts” (named after the character in the William Goldman novel and later movie “The Princess Bride”), the site drew the public ire of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. The FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht after an elaborate sting operation caught him logged on to the Silk Road site as the Dread Pirate Roberts himself.

The Dark Web has become an arena where the cat and mouse game between authorities and those who exploit a child’s innocence continues. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that as of January 2015, its CyberTipline received more than 3.3 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation since it was launched in 1998. Memex, a powerful new search engine developed by DARPA has given U.S. law enforcement the ability to root out the elusive miscreants who trade in the most depraved corners of the Dark Web.

We face a desperate struggle as child exploitation continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. Law enforcement needs everyone to learn how those who exploit our children operate. It is only when we have all joined together in the fight to save our children that we will finally eradicate these parasites of the innocent.

As a survivor of child sex trafficking, childhood sexual abuse and childhood sexual exploitation, I understand the continuous cycle of abuse each victim suffers. As a child I was abandoned by irresponsible and abusive parents, left to fend for myself, stripped of the tools that every child needs to function in the world and saved from a darker ending only by the unconditional love of my great-aunt.

I have struggled my entire life with the effects of my early loss of innocence. Overcoming it has been my greatest triumph, but it only became possible through the love and caring of those who held human compassion in the highest regard and dedicated themselves to the rescue of those standing at the edge of the abyss.

My sincerest hope is that I can save one child from suffering the hell I endured. Then I can leave this life with a sense of accomplishment. I hope you will all join me in the fight to protect our children from sexual predators before the next child is stripped of innocence.

To learn more about how you can help stop those who exploit a child’s innocence and report suspected child sexual exploitation, visit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website http://www.missingkids.com/cybertipline/ or call the CyberTipline at 1-800-843-5678. Working together we can save the next child from a lifetime of ravaged innocence and stolen hopes and dreams.

Source: The Dark Web

Friday, October 19, 2012

FBI - "Safe Online Surfing" - Podcasts and Radio:

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Safe Online Surfing

10/19/2012
Mollie Halpern: The FBI launches a new website where students can learn about cyber safety through games, videos, and other interactive features.
Scott McMillion: It’s a fun learning environment so that they will understand the keys to keeping themselves safe as well as participating in good cyber citizenship.
Halpern: I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau, and this is FBI, This Week. The free web-based initiative is called Safe Online Surfing, or SOS. It teaches kids in third through eighth grades how to recognize and respond to online dangers such as cyberbullying, online predators, and identity thieves. Scott McMillion is the unit chief of Violent Crimes Against Children.
McMillion: The FBI Safe Online Surfing initiative is designed to meet all federal and state Internet safety mandates so that students and teachers can use this as part of their curriculum in the classroom.
Halpern: Schools can compete with each other on a national level. Schools with the highest scores will earn an FBI-SOS trophy. To register, visit sos.fbi.gov.


Join Trinity Mount Ministries on Twitter:

Monday, September 3, 2012

Internet Safety / Online Predators Video



Trinity Mount Ministries on YouTube - 
Internet Safety / Online Predators Video:

Online Predator Stats:

77% of the targets for online predators were age 14 or older.  Another 22% were users ages 10 to 13.

Only 1/3 of households with Internet access are actively protecting their children with filtering or blocking software.

25% of children have been exposed to unwanted pornographic material online.
One in five U.S. teenagers who regularly log on to the Internet say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the Web. Solicitations were defined as requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give personal sexual information.

Only approximately 25% of children who encountered a sexual approach or solicitation told a parent or adult.

- Crimes Against Children Research Center

75% of children are willing to share personal information online about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services.
- eMarketer

One in 33 youth received an aggressive sexual solicitation in the past year. This means a predator asked a young person to meet somewhere, called a young person on the phone, and/or sent the young person correspondence, money, or gifts through the U.S. Postal Service.
- Your Internet Safety Survey

CyberTipline NCMEC:


Trinity Mount Ministries

Join Trinity Mount Ministries on Twitter: