University Wire E-mail peddles child pornography
EVANSTON, Ill. - When fifth-year graduate student Joe Kraus checked his e-mail Monday afternoon, he expected to find messages from friends or members of his listserv groups.Instead, a message from "TipToe0001@aol.com" showed up on his computer desktop. It advertised the sale of child pornographic materials, including pictures and videos."I was just shocked," Kraus said. "I'm assuming it's a prank. I can't imagine anyone actually doing this, because it's a crime to possess and market child pornography. But even as a prank, it's a joke about something that's just not funny under any circumstances."
In the message Kraus received, the sender wrote: "I am a fan of child pornography and for the past four years, I have been able to gather quite a collection of it. I am now selling my products (or trading for other child pornography)." The message also included a price list for the pornographic materials and an address to send order requests.
Kraus reported the message to Northwestern Information Technology officials, who told him they had already received other complaints about the message. In an e-mail to The Daily Northwestern, NU Information Security Coordinator Roger Safian said Information Technology received about 25 complaints about the message, but only about three came from NU students.
The message was sent to e-mail account users all over the world just after midnight on Monday. It was sent from two different America Online addresses, Safian said.
America Online officials said they don't know how many users received the messages, but Safian estimated that the number was "easily in the thousands" and was also sent to other universities and Internet service providers.
"Has a real law been broken here?" Safian said. "If I had to make a quick guess, I'd say no."
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