Warning: this article addresses an adult theme.
Michael had 14 years when he first entered the live video chat site Omegle.
He had heard of He was intrigued by its fame as a strange and unpredictable hangout at school.
Within hours of being randomly matched with strangers, the teenager says he found himself with a woman older than him who persuaded him to show her his penis.
“I’m not sure if she was an adult or not, but she was definitely older than me,” he says.
“I remember he asked me if I wanted to see her naked. She invited me to masturbate with her. I did it because I was stupid. If I could go back, I would have stopped. ”
Michael logged out shortly after and remained concerned about the incident.
But then curiosity got the better of him and he reconnected as a user of 18 years.
That unleashed a sequence of events that, according to him, not only haunts him, but also makes him question that first woman was a real person or not.
“I got addicted”
“I started visiting the site again and started do ‘things’ on camera with different people. Sex videos, “he explains.
Michael says he became addicted and had to” quit “after months of many explicit and consensual interactions.
His life went on and he forgot about Omegle, until he was plunged into boredom last year, in the middle of the coronavirus quarantine.
“I relapsed and came back to the website. One afternoon I was randomly paired with a video of myself doing adult stuff. Someone had recorded one of my video chats and had been using it for at least a year. ”
Michael says he recognized himself instantly and that he knew that this supposed live chat was a scam.
He was horrified, but needed to know what was going on, so he began to chat in writing.
Quickly, the mysterious person who He controlled the video and tried to get Michael to participate in a sexual act.
“It was like a completely advanced system with different video sequences. For example, the person writing in the chat would encourage me to get naked and then they would seamlessly edit their own video to make it look like I was taking my pants off. They tricked everything and showed the video of me masturbating. ”
Deception to incite sex
Michael (not his real name) says it was convincing.
He worries that other people may have been Tricked into engaging in sex acts on Omegle thinking they were having a consensual live experience with another user .
Michael contacted with the BBC after a previous report exposed what appeared to be videos of various children showing themselves on Omegle.
- BBC Research | Omegle: the live video chat page where minors are sexually exposed in front of adults
The company says it is “deeply distressed” by Michael’s story and that it is “improving moderation practices to eliminate” this behavior as much as possible.
The page, based in the United States and operating in dozens of languages, was launched in 2009, but its popularity soared during the pandemic, with around two million visits a day .
It is becoming increasingly popular with young people thanks to viral videos on TikTok and YouTube and other social networks.
The motto of the site is “talk to strangers” and a live counter on the site indicates that tens of thousands of people are connected at that time.
There is a warning on the site that the “depred adores ”use it, and that it is not for children under 18 years, but there is no age verification system .
There is also no way to report incidents or contact the company online or by mail.
Michael, who now has 21 years old and originally from Scandinavia, he says he decided to share his story because he wants people to learn from his experience and wonder who is on the other side of the video chat.
“This generates constant stress for me, although it reassures me that at least my face cannot be seen,” he explains.
“But it hurts to be used do to hurt other people like that. In fact, I think this is the way I was hooked on the site when I had years, although I cannot confirm that the other user was false. ”
Sarah Smith of The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a non-profit organization dedicated to policing abusive content on the web, said that such tricks by software are sometimes referred to as “virtual cam hookers.”
“I can’t imagine how distressing it must be to find someone using a video of yours this way, but these virtual camera robots are something that we see being used to trick and coerce children into performing sexual acts, “he said.
” We have seen cases in which children are shown videos of other minors, which we know they can’t be happening live because we’ve seen that video before elsewhere. ”
“ We see this on various sites where kids are known to engage in live face chats to face”.
IWF says they would like to see better moderation on live chat sites and strict age verification , to protect children and all users of this type of behavior.
“We would also like users to know about these tricks. We used to say ‘seeing is believing’, but unfortunately the exact opposite happens with these fake live videos. ”
Andy Patel of cybersecurity company F-Secure says that There is an active community of Omegle bot creators who share tips and techniques on YouTube videos and other forums .
“Most of the sexually tempting bots on Omegle seem to be very rudimentary scripts designed to interact with as many of them of people possible. Most simply encourage people in the text chat to click on the links to take them off the site and take them somewhere else, where a human operator will likely take over.
“However, I think in Michael’s case, there is likely a human ‘operator’ behind the scenes who is clicking on the sequence of actions on Omegle to make it more believable.”
Omegle has been criticized by its users and specialists, including the IWF, for not doing enough to moderate the site or prevent children from accessing it.
A Investigator specializing in sexual exploitation of minors from the UN Human Rights Office contacted the BBC after the previous publication on Omegle.
Who heads the site?
Leif K . Brooks created Omegle when he had 18 years and remains its owner.
The BBC learned that Omegle was contacted by the UN office, but the case is at a confidential stage of the process.
Brooks still runs the website.
Says Omegle’s moderation is carried out by a fully automated artificial intelligence service, as well as a third-party monitoring company that has a team that monitors the site for 24 hours, seven days a week.
- The pedophile hunter who became the prey of her own trap
“The inappropriate behavior that has occurred, although it is a very small percentage of the millions of daily interactions, is deeply disturbing and unacceptable for me,” he said.
“Omegle is fully committed to addressing the concerns raised so that a small minority of stakeholders do not spoil the positive interactions experienced by millions of users.”
Brooks says he has no evidence that Michael’s “bot” is being used on his site, and that his new system could detect it.
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