SEX FIRMS BOMBARDING EMAIL KIDS WITH PORN

Sunday Mirror, Jan 13, 2002 by GERARD COUZENS

CHILDREN are being bombarded with sordid sex pictures via their computer email, a Sunday Mirror investigation has revealed.

Obscene images promoting hard-core sex websites are sent to them, attached to seemingly innocent email messages.

Sex companies send out millions of the emails to children and adults at random each day in the hope that people will visit the websites and sign up for porn online. Although children are not deliberately targeted, they become innocent victims of the mass mailing - or spamming as Internet users call it.

The porn email blitz was exposed on computer giant Microsoft's Hotmail email system, which can be accessed by registered users from any computer.

Five weeks ago we set up a Hotmail account using the name of a character from Lord of the Rings. By yesterday we had received 172 junk emails - including 76 advertising porn websites. Some contained Internet links to sex movies.

The email address was simply set up by a reporter and wasn't even used.

Internet experts have warned that authorities are virtually powerless to stop the porn flood. Sex firms often use foreign internet service providers outside the reach of UK law to transmit the emails.

John Carr, Internet consultant for children's charity NCH, said: "Some of these emails contain quite horrific porn which can take children to very unsavoury places."

Rick Kruze, computer security officer at Manchester University, said: "These emails are indiscriminate and are just as likely to end up in the email basket of a child as an adult."

The messages can usually be deleted without being viewed. However, some automatically show images of graphic sex when an attempt is made to erase them.

Martino Corbelli, of Internet specialists Surf Control, said: "These explicit images will almost certainly be viewed by young children. By unwittingly opening them, they'll send a message back to the spammers that it's an active account and they'll be bombarded with more."

Many email services, including Hotmail and AOL, use special "spam filters" which block unwanted messages and blacklist the senders. But Internet pornographers are now disguising emails to bypass the filters.

It is estimated more than 150 million unsolicited porn emails are sent out daily around the world.

Britain now has more than two million under-17s online - the highest number in Europe - and a quarter of those are under 11.

EU chiefs say that worldwide 15 billion spam mails are sent every day, and they estimate the number will more than double by 2005 as the Internet use grows.

Campaigners now want the porn emails outlawed - and prison sentences imposed on those who send them.

The Home Office has set up a new group to look at the problem. Its chairman Roland Perry said: "There's been quite a steep increase in pornography-related emails. They're going indiscriminately to all kinds of people of all sorts of ages."

EU legislators are set to move to protect children this year by making it illegal to send unwanted junk emails.

A Microsoft spokesman said: "We recognise the seriousness of the issue of unsolicited email, the distress it can cause some users and our responsibility to address the problem."

THE TOO HOT MAIL

..Blitzed by sick offers

WE set up our Hotmail account on December 7. We did not visit any outside sites or use the account name for any other purpose.

The first link to a porn site arrived from America the following day.

Over the next few days the account was deluged with porn and other spam - offering discounts on consumer goods like mobile phones.

On December 12 we were invited to download a sex movie and given a link which showed 15 seconds of a graphic porn scene.

The same movie offer arrived on December 20. Between then and yesterday, we had four offers of images of women having sex with animals - again with links to one of the hundreds of bestiality sites on the Net - and adverts for impotency drug Viagra online.

Disgusted by 'hijack'

EVERY month personal assistant Sanita Walia receives more than 20 unsolicited emails.

Most advertise get-rich-quick schemes and online mortgages - but some try to push sex sites with lurid contents.

"Hello Sexy," says one message. "My name is Heidi and me and my friend are horny. Click here to cum join the orgy party now." Another promises: "Eighteen- and 19-year-old girls home alone. Browse their live peep shows for free."

Sanita, 33, puts a block on the porn emails on her Hotmail account as soon as she comes across them. She says: "They're not the sort of thing I'd want my young nephews and nieces to see. Some are really disgusting.

"It's wrong that people are able to send you this sort of stuff. They're hijacking the Internet for their own ends."