FBI kept child pornography forum alive to track visitors

After seizing a child porn site at the end of last year, the FBI kept the relevant forum alive for weeks. In this way, the investigation service wanted to map out the forum visitors who exchanged child pornography.

The site, which was taken over by the FBI in November last year, is said to have approximately 5,600 users. During a two-week period, all visitors were tracked after the court in Nebraska granted permission to do so. Thousands of images are said to have been exchanged between the forum users on the forum. Then the FBI shut down the site in question, writes the San Francisco Chronicle.

By keeping the website up and running for several weeks, the FBI would have tried to identify the visitors and map out possible networks. According to the investigation service, this was the only method to identify the visitors to the forum. Despite this, information was posted on the relevant forum describing how visitors could stay out of the hands of the police. No charges have been filed in the case to date, although investigations are still ongoing. There has also been a raid.