Silly X-UIDs

Hideousness of Some Very Dark Online Activity

Child expl0itation, of course, of all forms flourishes on the Internet; this is definitely one of the most disgusting subjects to blog, isn't it? - Reportedly arrests have been made in an online international kiddie p0rn ring. Great news: the more arrests the better where ever these disgusting people hide. I occasionally go to the Drudge Report and on this evening found this screaming ALL CAPS headline: CHILD P0RN RING TRANSMITTED ACTS LIVE ON WEB - Here is a link to that very news story.

Maverick online media man Matt Drudge, a long-time netizen and a pioner blogger, capitalizes on lead stories (when it bleeds, it leads) so goes the contrite quip about media in general. Drudge brings down a lot of smaller shared websites when he links to them since his mega site generates so much traffic. According to Alexa, Drudgereport.com is the 265th busiest site online and according to Drudge himself, a total of 3,633,320,392 visitors clicked on his website in 2005. I know in times past, DrudgeReport ranked higher than the humble 265th place his site is listed now. Drudge has his own set of detractors such as this one who was wise enough years ago to buy a shorter domain name; this website owner probably gets some of drudge's own traffic for those not very proficient at typing out longer domain names. According to netcraft.com there are 53 active domains containing drudgereport and well over 200 active domains containing drudge. I can surmise without visiting all these sites that the vast majority were created because of Matt Drudge; with domains activated such as: drudgeisajoke.blogspot.com, drudgepuppet.com or bizzarodrudge.com you know that Drudge has a lot of Net buddies.

I first learned about Drudge when the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal story broke. Drudge already had a significant following at that time 1998. Since then, when I am in a news mood, I go to his site for top stories. I have heard the traditional media despite what Drudge has done. I think Drudge is a very interesting one man media show online. However, over the more recent years, I frequent geek-infested Fark.com for reading unusual news stories where one can get an account and contribute a note worthy newstory. Heck, you can even customize the title to the news story to make it eye catching! I guess this is the democraziation of spreading news when any ol' online Jane or Joe who knows how to get around online can site odd news stories for others to read. Interestingly enough, Fark.com is ranked by Alexa as the 867th most popular site.

Now back to the sordid topic of online child porn0graphy. I know from friends in American ISPs that in the US the FB1 does investigate cases of online child p0rn0graphy which is deemed graphic. Fighting online crime of this nature is a very tall order and task undertaken by any government agency, non-profit organization, or a humble ISP's security department. These kiddie p0rn peddlers probably do all they can to hide their tracks such as persistant ROKSO spammers do or the sneaky gangs of phishers who send out spam to steal banking, creditcard or other personal information to empty bank accounts or commit identity fraud. The US based Antiphishing.org does a fine job in helpig banks and organizations and end-users fight this very large online criminal activity. It is known within those who work at ISPs that some kiddie p0rn sites pop up on the net from setting up fraudulent shared hosting accounts, sharing data on IRC channels. P2P websites or compromising existing webhosting accounts. It is rather interesting to note how these illegal p0rn peddlers behave like rogue spammers and phishers.

posted by my0p @ 8:21 PM