Protect Kids, Get F*cked

Thanks. It's pretty cathartic to talk about it. I haven't thought much about it in a long time. I skipped a lot of the details around CarWoo! too...at some point we will get around to posting that.

I think I need to clarify what IMSafer did. A lot of arm chair QBs here talking about how's it's evil or that abuse of children in a sexual way just doesn't happen...that could not be further from the truth.

No offense (well we know where this is going), but anyone saying this has no f*$%ing idea what they are talking about.

What we found in those years with IMSafer and later with the company that purchased our assets was mindblowing in a terrible way.

In the US we weren't allowed to really do anything with the data we found even in the most awful cases. When the patriot act was in affect there were opportunities to turn some of the data over to the gov agencies that deal with exploited children, but it was unclear.

In the UK they were allowed to more freely use what they found to put pedophiles behind bars...which they did on more then one occasion.

In some cases it appeared that children had installed the software as a desperate cry for help against their abusive family members.

In one particular egregious case the offender was involved in group chats where he would try to normalize the behavior to his child by having other sick individuals tell her it was OK. Then, they would setup times for her to be online with them while terrible acts were perpetrated on her.

No one is acting as if this was common. But, it did happen. And we weren't selling the chat, running ads against it or in anyway trying to monetize the 'fear' or grief of our users.

A lot of people here do not have kids and don't understand how hard it is for parent's to talk their kids about all sorts of issues around sex and drugs and rebellion etc.

In many cases IMSafer was their last hope and it was very helpful to a lot of people.

We never started it because we wanted to spy on kids or know people's gossip. We did it because we realized that parents were ill equipped to deal with the new online world.

Porn was a not a concern. To us that was your child viewing something. What we were concerned with was someone coming into your child's world and talking to them without your permission. If the child was having an issue with their parent's these kind of people would pick at that and try to show the child they were on their side to win trust.

Places where parent's thought their kids should be safe just weren't and still are not.

Also, some kids are susceptible to these kind of attacks by predators. In some cases parent's had kids who had been sexually assaulted in real life already and they were very afraid, because of their child's mental makeup now, that they would make easier targets.

We had adults buying plane tickets for kids and working out details to get them to fly across the country to meet under the guise of some camp the kid was going to, etc.

It's real whether you want to deal with it or not. We did our best to balance online privacy while helping people.

I feel like we did a phenomenal job and we didn't sell fear. It was never part of our marketing or selling.

You are absolutely correct about the photos. Explicit photos were going both ways on chats. We were working on a solution to that, and had licensed some pretty cool tech from a small firm in DC.

re: the notion that _you_ would have known about a creep online, that's awesome. It's great that you were so self aware. Not every child can say the same. A favorite quote of mine applies here. No matter how you cut the math, and no matter how much you don't like the answer, 50% of the population is below average intelligence.

All of the content on our site explicitly suggested to parents that they should talk to their children _before_ installing our software. Talk about why they were installing it, and show them how it works. Every kid hated it. Of course they did. I would have. Unfortunately, kids have plenty of time to think about ways to circumvent protections their parents put in place. Parents have jobs, multiple kids, schedules to maintain, etc, and in general were outgunned on the technology front. They are all screaming for help, or suffering in silence, throwing up their hands because they cannot solve the problems for themselves.

When we started IMSafer, we were all in our late 20s or very early 30s. We were all hacker types. We also had young kids. One of our advisors was a police officer (personal friend) who spent a ton of time with us talking about the realities of the bad people out there. It's not Chris Hanson crazy, but there are really, really bad people out there. More often than not, related to the harmed minor.

> As a child, under the age of 18, in the US, has no rights.

I was going to mention the UN convention on the rights of children.

(http://www.unicef.org.uk/UNICEFs-Work/Our-mission/UN-Convent...)

But it seems that only 2 countries haven't formally approved it - Somalia and the US. (And Somalia doesn't have a government, so I guess they get a pass for the moment.)

Articles 3, 5, 12, 13, 15, 16, etc etc would all be relevant. If you had carried on with the software this could have helped sell the product. Compare

"You are under 18. You have no rights" with

"You are under 18. You have rights. We know what they are, and we feel our product helps you enforce your rights, and carefully balances your rights with your parent's rights."

I don't think it's really unfortunate that kids can circumvent technical measures. It's unfortunate that parents want a robot babysitter.

The primary danger comes from breaking the barrier between online and in-person. The best solution seems to me to be parents being understanding and supportive. Want to meet someone you talk to online in person? OK, fine. The parents come along and meet in a public place. If, instead the rule is "no meeting people from the internet ever", teenagers will do it anyway in a much less safe manner.