THUNDER BAY – Crimebeat – Thursday’s announcement of a major series of arrests in Ontario over child pornography also unveil that there are cases likely happening across the province. The OPP shared a map and video highlighting the problem in Ontario.
The video is a visual representation of the availability of child pornography and child sexual abuse is in Ontario.
The visual display created by Detective Paul Krawczyk of the Toronto Police Service.
The map shows 8,940 individual I-P addresses that have been identified as download candidates for suspected child pornography in Ontario for the past three months. Each red dot represents a cluster of I-P addresses. When one of the clusters is viewed, it reveals the total number of different suspected I-P addresses in each cluster. This is just a sample of the major clusters found in our Partners’ jurisdictions that police continue to investigate.
Likely few people surfing the Internet, going on social media websites, and other websites realize the amount of information that they are leaving behind. Each Internet account has an I-P address. Each I-P address is recorded as one visits a website. It is how for example Internet giant Google can determine popularity of searches online. It leaves information that websites can use to determine interest in their site.
In the case of Internet Service Providers (ISP), companies like Tbaytel, Shaw, or Bell, can gather information as well.
Law Enforcement can also use the information, as demonstrated in this video.
There are some ways that those attempting to hide their I-P activity can use, but likely in many cases, all that may to is point to that user as a possible suspect attempting to hide their tracks. The use of proxy services for example that claim to allow “blind” surfing of the Internet don’t really do it, they mostly make it appear like a user is surfing anonymously.
What kind of information do you leave behind?
In simple terms, no personal information that says who you are, or your name. The image here is from a visitor on NetNewsledger.com. This visitor is using AOL to surf the Internet. They searched on Google for “the pikangikum first nation school”. The news item on NetNewsledger.com was ranked #1 by Google, and they arrived on the site to read it.
“Every child has the right to be nurtured and the right to be safe. Child pornography is the sexual abuse of children. Every image of child pornography represents a child victim. Every trading or transmission of that image represents a re-victimization of that child,” stated Scot Tod, Acting Commissioner, Ontario Provincial Police.
Police report the investigation continues.