The internet allows data to travel to even more most remote places on Earth, effectively transforming how people communicate, work, and play.
However, as an ever-increasing number of people gain access to the internet, not only the goods are there, because bad things also happen on the internet. Anyone with an internet connection is exposed to both the positive and the negative sides of the digital world.
And anyone here includes adults and children.
Whereas females lure elderly men and get them to engage in illicit activities, and that former lovers can leak their partners' private content in an act of revenge porn, bad actors also target children into engaging in sexual activities, because they known that children can be easy to trick due to their lack of knowledge and experience.
These explicit content are actively being traded on the web, social media and messaging apps, and there is little anyone can do, besides helping the authorities by uncovering their activities.
And here, Malaysian DJ and Playboy model Leng Yein, sets an example of how this should be done, as reported by The Daily Beast.
While not in her line of work, Yein who is an active internet user, has been using her Facebook page to warn people about online scams.
And this time, it all started when she began receiving messages from young and underage female fans begging her for help.
At first, she only received a handful of messages. But later, hundreds of messages began pouring in, per day, describing the same thing. They said they were victims of an elaborate scam orchestrated by users on Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, and other popular social media platforms.
Posing as modeling agents, friends, and ex-lovers, among other fake and stolen identities, Yein is notified that the perpetrators falsely promised money and prizes, such as iPhones, in exchange for their nude photos and videos.
When these minors fell for the bait, the bad actors later sold and published them online without the victims’ consent.
Some users even threatened to send copies of the ill-gotten photos to victims’ friends, family, and co-workers if they didn’t keep supplying pornographic content.
Upon hearing this, she was horrified.
"The worst extortion case of naked photos in Malaysian history!" she said.
"Some victims have chosen to commit suicide because they cannot bear the insults, teasing and pressure from others online. These little children who are still alive have been threatened, intimidated, blackmailed, and forced every day for these years. They live under fear, darkness, and hellish pressure every day."
According to Internet Removals, an Australian reputation management and takedown company, what happened here is that, Yein's fans were victims of a massive, highly organized online porn ring.
The company has since worked with Yein to remove more than a hundred thousand offending photos and videos from Meta, the popular New Zealand hosting site from Kim Dotcom.
Among the many explicit content, include a transgender man being assaulted by a group of men, who stripped his clothes, and set them on fire.
"While we typically charge fees for the provision of our services, the scale of harm caused by incidents was enough to warrant immediate action without cost to any of the victims," said Jasmine Loh, a reputation analyst at Internet Removals Asia.
Loh provided links to roughly a dozen Facebook and Twitter accounts used to sell and distribute the pornography, with some accounts charging up to $115 for “private collections” of Malaysian women and, according to Yein, girls as young as 8 and 11 years old.
Internet Removals and other online reputation management firms deal with these borderless crimes.
These agencies initiate takedowns to a wide variety of online platforms, including porn sites, in addition to reporting any instances of child sexual abuse or other online scams to authorities, and if requested, can also help track down the attackers and file lawsuits.
But to limit if not prevent these explicit content from being shared, it requires collaborative effort.
Public-private partnerships have been shown to help address the complex challenges associated with online threats.
While these things won't end anytime soon, simply because the demand is still there, the best way to help prevent content like these flourish, is to diminish the supplies.
And Yein here, shows how concerned citizens can help.
In Malaysia, the law prohibits the production, possession, and distribution of child pornography. This crime carries a maximum penalty of up to 30 years imprisonment and six strokes of the whip.
While the government and the authorities are doing what they can, the country nevertheless has the highest number of IP addresses uploading and downloading child pornography in Southeast Asia, according to data from the Royal Malaysia Police.
Going from bad to worse for this particular market, some people take pleasure in humiliating victims by doxing their full names and Instagram handles, and then use hashtags like #rape and #bitch.
"If you like, you can forward it, let everyone know this girl is scum," said one of the uploaders.
And going even worse, sellers of the content, which promised "absolute security and confidentiality,” aren't always true to their words.
One careless vendor, for example, posted redacted WeChat receipts for transactions involving “leaked” photos of Malaysian schoolgirls, but failed to properly mask the buyers’ names.
Following the report, Twitter, Meta which owns both Facebook and Instagram, have permanently suspended some of the accounts, saying that they have zero tolerance for any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation.
"At its worst, image-based abuse leads to self-harming and loss of life," Loh told The Daily Beast. "We implore anyone, whether they are young men sharing images with their friends, or an organization sharing these images for profit, to reconsider their actions before more victims harm themselves, or take their life. There is no gain that can justify these actions."