What makes the site dangerous is that there aren’t any safeguards in place to verify users’ ages or to filter out inappropriate content.
That combined with the fact that the site pushes users to upload pictures of themselves means underage children could be chatting and sharing pictures of themselves with adult users.
Following a major international operation backed by Interpol, authorities in the country swooped on a number of organised crime gangs over the past two days.
More than 260 desktop and laptop computers, mobile phones, pornographic materials and other pieces of evidence were seized during the raids by 15 police teams, Philippine National Police chief Allan Purisima told a news conference in Manila.
The victims would then be told that the material had been recorded and will be uploaded to the Internet and made public if they do not pay a fee.The site has gotten in trouble before when two girls, ages 12 and 15, and a 13 year old boy, who downloaded the app, were allegedly raped by adults who were using the app to meet children.The article, written by Dan Lyons at Newsweek’s The Daily Beast, can be read here.Several of the arrests are believed to be linked to the case of Daniel Perry, a 17-year-old mechanic from Dunfermline in Fife, who died in July last year after falling victim to an alleged “sextortion” attempt.Daniel believed he was speaking to an American girl but was then told by blackmailers that the conversations had been recorded and would be shared with friends and family if he didn’t pay up.“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa, director of the Philippine police Anti-Cybercrime Group, said, adding that many more suspects and extortion gangs remain at large and will be pursued.