Like Google, Microsoft Scans Accounts for Illegal Images

Hot on the heels of Google ratting out a man for sending illegal images by email, a new report has emerged saying that Microsoft discovered child abuse images in a Pennsylvania man’s OneDrive account. He is now in a county correctional facility waiting to face preliminary court that takes place next week. The man has not entered a plea.

BBC News reports that the images were acquired through the Kik Messenger app. He also traded and received “images of child pornography on his mobile cellular device.” The report doesn’t state how Microsoft became involved, but the user presumably has a Windows Phone, iOS or Android device that backs up images to Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage.

Microsoft contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline after the image of a young girl was detected. According to Microsoft’s terms and conditions (3.6), it uses “automated technologies to detect child pornography or abusive behavior that might harm the system, our customers, or others.” Users are not allowed to “engage in any activity that exploits, harms, or threatens to harm children.”

"Child pornography violates the law as well as our terms of service, which makes clear that we use automated technologies to detect abusive behavior that may harm our customers or others," Mark Lamb from Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit told the BBC. "In 2009, we helped develop PhotoDNA, a technology to disrupt the spread of exploitative images of children, which we report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as required by law."

PhotoDNA is integrated into the Child Exploitation Tracking System, or CETS. Microsoft explains that it’s a “collaborative global law enforcement program supported by Microsoft technology for child pornography investigations.” PhotoDNA breaks an image down into a grid and creates a histogram, thus creating the equivalent of a fingerprint. This allows Microsoft to catch flagged images without its staff having to actually look at the picture.

This is not the first time Microsoft has called upon the authorities over child porn photos. Back in May, a Largo, Florida man was accused of storing child pornography on his OneDrive account. The man allegedly uploaded around 3,046 “child erotica” images. Microsoft discovered the images back in March and immediately contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria.

The Tampa Bay Times said that the images stored on OneDrive were “elaborately produced” by websites that are no longer active.

Just recently, Google briefly explained how it detects child pornography in emails without getting into details.

"Each child sexual abuse image is given a unique digital fingerprint which enables our systems to identify those pictures, including in Gmail," a Google spokesperson told AFP in an email. "It is important to remember that we only use this technology to identify child sexual abuse imagery -- not other email content that could be associated with criminal activity (for example using email to plot a burglary).”

Federal law requires that large media companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft report possible child pornography, whether it’s posted in social media, stored in a virtual locker or stored in an email.

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