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Adult Friend Finder:
Paedophiles Are Just One Click Away

Posted by Pat in Child Safety with the tags , , , , on November 5, 2009

handfireExclusive to Single Parent Gossip – Pornography on the Internet has many faces. We all know that it always was and always will be one of the most popular topic areas and most of us have to admit that we at least played with the idea to find out what is out there.

But there is one topic we usually don’t talk about and pretend it does not exist – child pornography. Single Parent Gossip author and child safety expert Pat McKenna exposed disturbing information that child pornography and paedophiles may be just one click away from some single parents. This direct imminent threat to the safety of children does not only exist in what many still believe is an ocean of anonymity of the Internet. There is an especially alarming implication for the real world.

This article outlines the serious nature of a threat to the safety of millions of users of the world’s most popular adult personals site Adult Friend Finder (AFF), which is advertised on potentially innumerable sites that are flooded with imagery depicting the sexual abuse and exploitation of children as well as links to sickening child pornography and paedophiles.

Websites carrying AFF ad banners act as so-called affiliate marketers that are sending their site visitors directly to AFF. They are paid by AFF on a per-click basis suggesting that there is substantial financial incentive for marketers to place AFF ads wherever possible. AFF pays for that traffic, which means that the service is aware of the origin of users as well as the identity of the marketer in order to maintain accounting.

Since AFF is a social network specializing in adult personal ads, it can only be considered reckless to be part of a scenario where its subscribers, which include many single parents, are placed in close proximity to paedophiles and criminals that run sites containing illegal child content. At the very least, AFF may act in an incredibly negligible way that may put thousands of children at risk to be exposed to paedophiles.

If you are a single parent and you are looking for contacts on Adult Friend Finder, you may want to weigh your risks and benefits. You may want to rethink whether you really want to keep your images and contact information on this site.


AFF Social Networking

There are millions of people across the world advertising their availability for sex, relationships and other things through the world’s largest adult personals site. The site is highly commercial, constantly seeking to extract a subscription from its patrons. It has many facilities that allow like-minded adults to seek companionship including personal ads with text and images (very often sexual), exchange email, engage in chat rooms or through instant messaging. It also has a very powerful search engine that allows its users to fine tune their search criteria in seeking out other members.

AFF Revenue And Advertising Model

FriendFinder Networks (FFN), which owns AFF and other significant brands, will be public with an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that is expected to happen by the end of this year.  The company will be traded under the ticker symbol FFN. As part of this exercise, FFN has declared its financial performance to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is currently in a quiet “cooling off period” that is required prior to going public.

Through its financial dealings and acquisitions, FFN has accrued significant debt and market experts indicate that the IPO will help FFN raise much needed cash to service its debt commitments.

For the first six months of 2009, AFF had about one million paying customers from where it got 79% of its income. It also has over 200,000 participants in its marketing affiliate program from which it derives a significant number of new subscribers. Within nine months AFF made $46.4 million in payments to those marketers, which means that affiliate marketers received an average of $233 over this period.

Marketing affiliates are companies that operate websites that market AFF services on their websites. They direct visitor traffic to AFF by using scripted banner ads and pop-up screens on which a user clicks.  AFF provides a technology platform for 10,000s of its affiliates which is designed to have the look and feel of the affiliates own site including logos etc, but it is actually hosted by AFF.

AFF also has a significant search engine marketing spend in the region of about $50 million a year. This means that its combined affiliate and search engine marketing spend each year is potentially more than $100 million.

Anyone can sign up to be an affiliate of AFF. Upon signing up and establishing the affiliate option, the affiliate is provided with a banner advertisement script that is embedded into the web page allowing AFF to track clicks from individual web sites and make payments for the traffic as part of the contract agreement.

However, with great success in marketing comes great responsibility, and the fact that the numbers of affiliates are huge, does not to mitigate that responsibility, especially if criminals are put in close proximity to single parents with children. At this time, it seems that AFF could care less who runs its ads and which users are directed to the adult personals site.

Read on the next page: Social Networking Risks And AFF

Pages: 1 2 3

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am and is filed under Child Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • pmktek
    Hi. Thx for the reply. I'm really interested in your argument.

    I wouldn't say that people on AFF may be abused or something. I do know people on AFF and they are happy to be on it, and I personally don't have an opinion one way or the other regarding their motives. Each to their own. My arguments are based on security and finance, and not any negative position that I may hold towards AFF.

    Regarding most abuse being in the family - ok.

    I also agree that AFF don't need traffic from sites depicting imagery of children but affiliates are putting it there.

    Regarding the harming bit - the example that I gave you in a previous comment re our 18 yr old daughter is not conjured up. Ask the security guys at AFF and they will tell you that putting links that enable muppets browsing child porn to navigate to their doorstep is not a trivial issue. I've implemented content filtering on gateways to sus issues just like this with businesses that have a regulatory duty to adhere to - it is a headache.

    I also accept that AFF are party to orgs that promote safety for children.

    I read their affiliate terms a couple of weeks ago when I came across this originally. At that point I was writing for Wolfgang and asked him to contact AFF to ask them what they were doing about it. They didn't reply - at all?

    It's not a panic button.

    It is true that I am not an affiliate, but I've been around the IT business a bit.

    Lastly - this is my original document from which the various media outlets like Toms and TGDaily created their pieces.

    http://www.childwatch.ie/page3...

    Take a read and near the end you will find four PID's. Analysis of traffic from them and payments to them will tell AFF a lot of what they need to know.

    Pat
  • Toby
    Your argument follows this alarmist logic:

    1) Hershey's makes chocolate.

    2) Kids like chocolate.

    3) Child predators could possible use chocolate to lure kids into their traps.

    4) OMG HERSHEYS SUPPORTS CHILD PREDATORS
  • pmktek
    Hi Toby

    I take your point.

    Let me ask you this: if your 18 yr old daughter was having a bit of craic on AFF, would you fancy having her profile presented to guys who were directed to the AFF login page straight from browsing hardcore child sex abuse material. Would you feel comfortable that she was in chat or im with them? What would you think about her meeting one of them because remember what I pointed out: when you hit the AFF landing page, the girls profiles that you encounter are local determined by the location of your ip address.

    For instance, if AFF could track (and they can) guys arriving on their site from darknets would you prefer that your 18 year old at least got some indication that guy she is going cam to cam with is heavy into CP gear?

    If she ended up meeting one of these johns, how would you feel about it yourself?

    My argument with aff is that they know where their traffic is coming from and they know that they are paying affiliates to get traffic from that domain. Why would you do that when you are one of the wealthiest social networks around?

    That's my hershey bar.

    pat
  • Toby
    First, an 18 year old is an adult. Second, if mine was on that site it's probably the result of some abuse she suffered. Most abuse is within the family, so I'll have to take a look in the mirror.

    If AFF is getting traffic from an illegal site, they would shut that down. They don't need traffic from an illegal site. They get enough traffic from other adult sites. Some of those adult sites you may find distasteful, but they aren't illegal.

    AFF doesn't want to harm anybody in the name of profit. They take incredible steps to keep this from happening. They have over 300 agents working 24/7 to monitor and kick off anyone who steps out of line. Every single post and picture you post as a member on their site is first reviewed for content. Any mention of underage sex gets you banned from the site.

    They inform parents how to keep their kids off adult sites:
    http://adultfriendfinder.com/g...

    Also, take a look at their term for being an affiliate. They expressly forbid the type of behavior you are talking about:

    "You are prohibited from submitting an Affiliate Network Application if your site or service(s) are involved in unlawful activity or contain objectionable material including by way of example only: a site or services containing images or content that is in any way unlawful, harmful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, or otherwise legally prohibited, a site or services facilitating illegal activity or considered obscene or harmful to minors or not in compliance with applicable laws; a site or services promoting fraudulent, unlawful, misleading, or unfair business practices, a site or services promoting violence, a site or services that has sent unsolicited commercial e-mail within the past four years, a site or services that intends on sending unsolicited commercial e-mail at any time during the term of this agreement, a site or services promoting discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, or age, a site or services incorporating any materials which infringe or assist others to infringe on any copyright, trademarks, patents, or other intellectual property rights, or a site or services involving unfair competition (collectively "Content Restrictions")."

    https://secure.adultfriendfind...

    What you are doing here is raising a panic button when you don't even understand how it works. You've gone halfway in your research. You think you've nailed how the adult industry works, but you've only looked at it from an alarmist perspective. You need to become an affiliate in order to see how it works.

    This is not a good article, I'm sorry. You just don't have your facts straight.
  • No names
    Honestly, AFF needs to sue for this.
  • pmktek
    Hi. I'm Pat

    Perhaps you should ask the affiliate friend and AFF itself to visit http://www.childwatch.ie/page4.php which is my original briefing document and address the questions at the end of the page?

    Also - don't be too surprised if the chap that is your AFF affiliate tells you that anyone can get hooked up to advertise and those ads can be placed anywhere, and any litigation that will occur will likely be between AFF and the affiliate(s) that put their ads on sites with child exploitation material on them, or in close proximity to them.

    He might also tell you that anyone that impacts on his business is a clown and if the material that we refer to wasn't there to begin with, then this report wouldn't exist.

    Then there is the surprising fact that I have been advised that placing ads of any description on sites with child exploitation material is not illegal in the US?

    Lastly - you are a producer of adult porn and you have no idea about the existence of child exploitation material at all? Wow. In the adult porn business, where having street smarts and a grasp of the law relating to porn is a major factor, you are an original.

    Regards, Pat McKenna
  • justjss
    (duplicate post appeared. Deleted ... my apologies.)
  • Let me get this straight ... You're saying that AFF, a site that specifically caters to adults, is more likely to have child molesters signing up than other social networking sites because AFF affilates show AFF ads on porn sites that you say depict the underaged. If you had spent any time on AFF, you'd know that it is rather better policed both by staff and members than many similar sites ... and certainly much better than, say, MySpace, which is much larger and which any child molester would know has his target demographic, and which is free.

    Mind, you, I'm not up for making a case against MySpace, other than for inanity. And I wouldn't have commented at all if you had attacked the morality of adults on AFF or other adult social networking sites; or bemoaned the availability of porn on the Internet. But all you've shown as any sort of connection for your argument is one redacted letter.

    Utterly specious and anecdotal. Brutally unfair. All wrapped up in "protect the children."

    Disgusting.
  • pmktek
    Hi Just Jss

    I agree that AFF is well policed. My point is this: if you run a significant affiliate or other online marketing campaign then you need to account for where your cash is going, and where your business is coming from.

    I added a comment to a reader below - it's about money and markets, and the safety of the people who post profiles on your site. That is the hub of the issue. If someone in AFF has any sense they will go to the affiliates who took their money and posted their ads on CP sites, knowing AFF's marketing mechanism that would land such people on the AFF landing page, and introduce those affiliates to the business end of a 2x4.

    However - none of this hits the real issue which is the plight of people who cannot have this discussion with us here - and they are the kids in the images on the sites where AFF ads are turning up.

    Protect the children is an issue. In fact it is the only real issue. You and I can debate this till the cows come home but i suspect that neither of us is going to forced to face sex abuse tonight. Unfortunately about 200 images of such fresh abuse are being posted on the net today. So someone is going to get abused for that market alone, and that is the real world.

    Regards, Pat
  • No Names,

    Thank you for your comment. Due to the intense graphic nature of images of words, it was our editorial decision not to publish any of the dozens of screenshots that have been produced and have been made available to Single Parent Gossip by Pat McKenna. We are happy to provide all material to possible investigators as well as AFF itself. Pat’s investigation is complete as far as I am concerned, as it even goes down to the registered website owners that are located in the U.S. as well as Europe. There is enough evidence to suggest that immediate action is required by AFF.

    On a personal note, I was not aware of the existence of material provided by Pat – remember child safety is his area of work - and I am grateful for the work he has done. Of course, you are entitled to your opinion, but we will not allow any of the truly disgusting imagery that includes plenty of AFF ads, as well as URLs, to run on Single Parent Gossip.

    Wolfgang

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