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Boystown (website)

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Boystown
logo
Type of site
Child pornography file sharing
LaunchedJune 2019[1]
Current statusOffline (as of mid-April 2021)[2]

Boystown (stylized in logo as BOYS TOWN) was a child pornography website run through the Tor network as a hidden service.

A high-ranking employee of a German security agency who receives "requests from the German government, from any public authorities, from the Ministry of Defense, from the BKA and anything else to check the security of certain processes" acts under the alias "Captain Sparrow" as an administrator for Boystown and optimizes the programming scripts.[3]

Hours after the shutdown, an unknown user posted a dump of Boystown online, as confirmed by the Frankfurt prosecutor's office. STRG_F then had files in the volume of 13.5 TB deleted from file hosters by December 2021. Admin The Antediluvian confirms this that investigators do not have files deleted. BKA said it had "7000 links deleted" last year. Investigators in Germany are only interested in hard drives of the perpetrators.[4] Three successor platforms (with 410 and 846 thousand accounts) with, among others, a common admin in Germany (a 21-year-old from Saxony) were shut down Christmas 2022. Another three suspected administrators were arrested in November and December in Seelze near Hanover,[5] Schleswig-Holstein and Brazil. The BKA has "secured" hundreds of thousands of images.[6]

Background

As of May 2021, the website was considered one of the largest international darknet platform to host child pornography. The website had 400,000 registered users.[2][7]

Website content

Examples of categories on Boystown

The website featured various forums and chats for communication. The illegal images and videos were posted on the forums and the chats where members were able to communicate with one another.[8] There were two chat services provided, one called "Lolipub" and the other was known as "BOYSPUB".[1] The child abuse materials exchanged between users were of young children and toddlers, most of which were boys, from around the world.[9] The child pornographic content had various categories including "Art" (which included shotacon among other subcategories[10]), "hardcore", "kindergarten", and "toddler".[1] Lolipub also had rules that included banning the promotion of hurtcore.[1]

Website investigation

The website was investigated by a German police task force with cooperation from Europol and international law enforcement agencies. The platform's administrators and users were under investigation for months.[2][7]

The public prosecutor's office does not say how they got on the scent of the convicts. The public and the press were excluded from the trial.

Agencies involved in the investigation

The following agencies took part in the investigation:[11]

Arrests

There were three primary suspects that were discovered and identified during the investigation: a 40-year-old man from Paderborn, a 49-year-old man from Munich, and a 58-year-old man from Northern Germany who was living in Paraguay. The suspects allegedly acted as administrators for the website and gave advice to its users on how to evade law enforcement while using the platform.[2] Another suspect was a 64-year-old man from Hamburg who was accused of being one of the most active users uploading over 3,500 posts.[2][7]

Website shutdown

In mid-April 2021, the website was raided by authorities and shut down.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Europol Just Took Down One of the World's Largest Dark Web Child Porn Sites". 3 May 2021. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Police bust dark web child porn site used by more than 400,000 members". CBS News. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  3. ^ Stark, Holger (8 September 2022). "Kindesmissbrauch: Wie besessen | ZEIT ONLINE". Die Zeit. Archived from the original on 2022-09-09.
  4. ^ "Pädo-Foren: Warum löscht niemand die Aufnahmen? | STRG_F". funk.
  5. ^ Hellerling, Peer (14 January 2023). "Kinderpornos im Darknet: Niedersächsischer Verdächtiger kommt aus Seelze". www.haz.de.
  6. ^ "BKA - Listenseite für Pressemitteilungen 2022 - Schlag gegen Darknet-Plattformen wegen der Verbreitung von Abbildungen sexualisierter Gewalt an Kindern". Archived from the original on 2023-04-17.
  7. ^ a b c "Police take down 'Boystown,' one of the largest child porn sites on the dark web". The Daily Dot. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  8. ^ "BOYSTOWN CHILD PORNOGRAPHY SITE BUSTED". 4 May 2021. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  9. ^ "German police make arrests as they shut down large darknet site housing child abuse material". ABC News. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  10. ^ File:Boystown forums.jpg
  11. ^ "4 arrested in takedown of dark web child abuse platform with some half a million users". 3 May 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
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