Craigslist Shuts Down Erotic Services Section

Craigslist has given in to the immense media attention regarding its "erotic services" ads and announced they are shutting the section down. In its place they are now adding an "adult" section, which appears to hawk the same type of personal adult services.

A lot of this occurred after it was discovered that a killer used Craigslist to stalk his victims, who were offering adult services. Since then the nasty subject of teenage prostitution on Craigslist has been covered in the mainstream press and the site has been referred to as an "online bordello."

Of course, Craiglist isn't the only place that advertises "adult services." They can be found in newspapers, alternative weekly rags, and a whole slew electronic venues besides Craigslist.

Craigslist announced the change on their blog and made some points in their defense. At the same time, they announced they will be charging for the ads in the new section and the proceeds will go to charity. All of the new ads will be reviewed by Craigslist employees before they are posted.

The post refers to statistics that the chances of a predator abusing their forum are less likely than a predator using print ads to commit a foul deed. Also pointed out was that Craigslist has safety features built into the site that most "classified advertising" venues don't have. These include blocking, screening, telephone verification, and a community flagging system. The company also claims they cooperate (at a high level) with law enforcement and that predators can be tracked electronically back to the computer they are using. Last but not least, they point to safety tips prominently posted on all forums. These safety tips run the gamut of illegal schemes commonly found on the Internet.

Investigations are normally confidential matters, but if someone was tracking a sexual predator some of these forums could provide real-time investigative capabilities to resolve the case. They could literally track everything to a particular location given the right circumstances and cooperation by the forum and the ISP. Quite often, the frustrations voiced by those tasked with investigating internet crime are that the site and or the ISP do not cooperate as much as they should. If these sites aren't going away, then maybe the solution is to make is easier to tag the offenders?

Craigslist claims they do cooperate with investigative inquiries, but thus far no one is publishing any of these stories. It does state that law enforcement personnel provided feedback on how to design their new "adult section." Again, I'm not sure, but I imagine they couldn't claim this unless there was some truth to it; there is probably an army of lawyers monitoring this situation.

I doubt a flurry of media attention directed at Craiglist is going to solve the "people abuse" problem caused by anonymous venues. The problem will merely move from one anonymous venue to another one. The key will be the ability of the people doing the abuse to remain anonymous, or at least think they are. When sites and ISPs cooperate, it really isn't hard to track a lot of these individuals.

Since none of these sites are going away anytime soon, perhaps the best solution is to make it easier for the authorities to obtain cooperation from them when abuse is suspected or occurred, which is exactly what Craigslist is claiming to do. But Craigslist is hardly the only place where people are victimized by those with sinister intent on the Internet or via advertising in the print media. We need to begin to take a realistic look at the entire issue.

One of the oldest social engineering techniques (sex) still seems to work!

Some would argue that sex is one of the oldest social engineering ploys to deceive someone into doing something they normally wouldn't do. As far as I know, it's been being used since biblical times.

Roderick Ordoñez at the Trend Labs Malware Blog (Trend Micro) is reporting that malware is being downloaded on systems using a mysterious woman named Melissa, who strips off her clothing (in increments) when a user puts in the right CAPTCHA code.

CAPTCHA codes are those annoying letters and numbers, we have to enter in a box to prove we are human.

From the Trend Labs Malware post:

A nifty little program that Trend Micro detects as TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A disguises itself as a strip-tease game, wherein a scantily clad “Melissa” agrees to take off a little bit of her clothing. However, for her to strut her stuff, users must identify the letters hidden within a CAPTCHA. Input the letters correctly, press “go,” and “Melissa” reveals more of herself.

It appears that no one is completely sure what the malicious intent is with Melissa, but Roderick speculates that:

The CAPTCHAs in the example above were taken from the Yahoo! Web site, possible proof that someone may be building a huge base of Yahoo! accounts. For spam-related reasons perhaps? Although various methods of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) are already used to circumvent the CAPTCHA, this social engineering technique is new in that it uses people to unsuspectingly aid a malicious user.

The dangers of downloading all kinds of what I refer to as cybernasties are well documented on porn sites. A lot of these sites are owned by organized criminals, and unsuspecting users have had their identities stolen by going on them.

Here is a post, I did where British citizens were charged with a crime after having their identities stolen in this manner:

British citizens accused of child porn found to be fraud victims

The investigation that started this originated in the United States.

Recently, I did a post on hackers almost shutting down the State of California's systems, by misdirecting them to porn sites. In the post, I wrote:

As I've written before -- exercise extreme caution when clicking on porn sites, they often make your computer come down with a virus (or worse)-- especially if "safe surfing practices" aren't being used.

Interesting post from the Trend Labs Malware Blog with some rather revealing graphics, here.