On September 5, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Against Snap. Torrez claimed that Snapchat has become a platform full of sexual exploitation, child grooming and other dangerous behavior. That legal complaint has been heavily redacted, but today Torrez revealed in a press release that she filed an unsealed complaint that details how Snap allegedly created an environment that exposed children to sexual predators.
The unredacted allegations include how Snap employees deal with 10,000 sextortion incidents every month. Still, the company never warned users because it didn’t want to “instill fear” among them. The statement also noted that Snap employees routinely ignored user reports of grooming and sextortion. The account, which has 75 separate reports, remains active, and Snap has refused to touch the content, citing “disproportionate admin costs.”
Snapchat’s disappearing messages have long sparked interest in the platform, but they allegedly lull users into a false sense of security. Because of this, predators find it easier to ask users for revealing photos before demanding money, otherwise these photos will be sent to friends and family.
The unredacted complaint also notes that Snapchat’s “Quick Add” feature suggests strangers to minors, and Snap Maps also allows adults to find accounts of minors. Quick addition was par proved to be dangerous Alejandro Marquez of New Mexico used it to lure and rape an 11-year-old girl, according to the complaint.
The complaint also alleges that Snap’s senior management routinely ignored former trust and security employees who pushed for additional and improved security mechanisms. CEO Evan Spiegel “prioritized design” over security and even refused to store offensive images for law enforcement to review and use as evidence. The company also did not update its database of child sexual exploitation images, even reversing changes and removing evidence of compliance.
Even worse, predators using Snapchat have started creating a “Sextortion Handbook” to teach others how to target users in schools. Along with the fact that 90 percent of all reports go unheeded and 30 percent of victims never receive any help from Snap, predators have essentially been free to roam.
That’s not the only issue New Mexico is concerned about. The complaint also accuses Snap of tolerating drug and gun sales. Drug traffickers used the platform freely to advertise their wares, while gaining “huge numbers of subscribers”. Teens have even died using drugs they bought after seeing it advertised on Snapchat.
As harmful as these threats are, Snapchat makes it difficult for parents to monitor their children’s use of Snapchat, as only 0.33 percent of teens are connected to Family Center. Snapchat also doesn’t actually verify a user’s age and allows fake birthdays to go unverified. This contradicts Snap’s claims that it does not allow children under 13 to use the app.
Based on these accusations, it would be easy to conclude that Snapchat is an unsafe platform for underage users. Lina Nealon, Director of Corporate and Strategic Initiatives at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said, “In my conversations with law enforcement, child safety experts, lawyers, survivors, and youth, I ask them, and I definitely do, what the most dangerous program is. , Snap is in the top two.”
In a statement Snap sent to Engadget when it was sued last month, the company claimed it was diligently rooting out bad actors and working with law enforcement. Today, Snap released the following statement regarding the unsealed complaint:
“We designed Snapchat as a place to communicate with a close circle of friends, with built-in security safeguards and thoughtful design choices to make it harder for strangers to detect minors on our service. We continue to improve our security mechanisms and to detect and block certain activities from using advanced technology, to banning friending suspicious accounts, to working with law enforcement and government agencies, and more.
We take our work here very seriously and it hurts us when bad actors abuse our service. We know that no one person, agency or company can do this alone, so we are collaborating across industry, government and law enforcement to share information and create a stronger defense concept.”
