Point Plus Partners, an Online Media & Security Consulting Firm, Responds to a New Threat the Internet Poses to Parents, Educators, and Businesses

Point Plus Partners, an Online Media and security consulting firm recently learned about an issue that has plagued United States city streets for decades. Yet many times goes unreported especially when the cases involve minors. In an interesting twist, two 16 year old girls from Arizona (Tatiana Tye, Jazmine Finley) were arrested for allegedly pimp’ing other teen girls some as young as 14 years old. In Chicago where one of its offices is located, this problem had reached epidemic proportions as client we have represented have informed Point Plus Partners, that leaders of these prostitution rings regularly move from county to county to avoid prosecution. The pimps and Madams that run these organizations have become so well versed in the law, that local law enforcement and the states attorney’s office often times have difficulty adequately prosecuting these cases. One of the organizations our company works closely with, recently informed “us of a new program that the FBI has rolled out called the RCFL or Regional Computer Forensics Lab”. This program allows “state and local law enforcement officers, a forensic means to examine data and electronic evidence (from cell phones and other devices) gathered in prostitution busts”. This joint partnership with state/local and federal law enforcement bodies provides a new breed of digital weapons to combat this ever growing social problem.

Over the course of two years Point Plus Partners, security arm had performed preliminary statistical modeling on various proxy sites targeting teen and business users. The sites that were set-up for this project were specifically aimed at users who wanted to bypass their local filters at their office or school in order to access social networking sites. By studying the traffic patterns and information that was passing through the test servers, it was found that an overwhelming majority of data and images flowing through the servers were inappropriate, based on the data gathering tools that performed the analysis. From a network security standpoint, what many High School and College students today do not realize, is that once they post or upload images to the internet or transmit them across cellular networks say to friends or fellow (cheerleaders, athletes, sorority members or fraternity members). It’s difficult if not impossible to get ever get those images back. In 2008, a large scale data-leak at one of the largest online social network sites, revealed a massive archive of over18 gigs of both public and private images were stolen after someone illegally hacking into the companies database, allowing these images to quickly spread around the globe in a matter of hours.

This past week Point Plus Partners has been dealing with senior leaders of the US Department of Justice, Department of Education, Republican Congressman Lamar Smith's Office, and President Barack Obama’s – old Illinois Senate office. To address just how serious these issues are. Specifically, what the government and private industry can do to protect minors from online child predators. And in the case of Tatiana Tye & Jazmine Finley, from allegedly using the internet, and personal connections to lure other young girls into prostitution.