Visa International is ramping up its battle against Internet child porn, with the credit card company's hunt against online child porners believed to have resulted in recent shutdowns of about 750 child porn or child porn tied Web sites.
Peter Maher, Visa's Asia-Pacific general manager for risk management, said in a statement December 15 that Visa International has been hunting for child porners around the world since early 2002 and working with members to get payment facilities away from such purveyors.
"As a global leader in payments technology, Visa supports initiatives intended to protect consumers, merchants and its members," Maher said. "It also naturally seeks to prevent cards being associated in any way with illegal activity, including child pornography."
Adult Sites Against Child Pornography executive director Joan Irvine told AVNOnline.com she and her group applaud the Visa moves.
"This action by Visa is good for everyone," she said. "Access to child pornography is limited and it gets rid of the bad 'apples' that tarnish the reputation of the professional business people in the industry."
Maher said over 85 percent of child porn sites spotted and identified by Visa International either don't accept Visa any longer or are no longer active, while Visa has specialists scanning over 1 million Web pages a day to detect child porn or child porn-linked Web sites as well as those still using Visa to pay for such material. The company is also working with numerous law enforcement agencies to report such sites and launch action against them, Maher added.
ASACP calls suspected child porn reports Red Flag Reports, which they send to the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Irvine said the group began sending RFRs to other international hotlines 18 months ago.
"The industry has been asking ASACP to become more proactive in shutting down these sites since it takes so long for law enforcement to do so," she said. "Because of the recently implemented systems, ASACP can now establish relations with various [Internet service providers], billing [companies], etc., and send RFR to their compliance departments."