back to article US Federal Trade Commission shuts down ISP

Federal authorities have shut down what they said was the worst US-based web hosting provider after convincing a judge it actively participated in the distribution of child pornography, spam, malware, and other net-based menaces. The US Federal Trade Commission obtained the court order against 3FN.net, a service provider with …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good

    People and companies like this deserve everything they get and kudos to the FTC for doing it silently to ensure they nail them get for every single last charge..............fucking sickos.

  2. Hud Dunlap
    Black Helicopters

    Why no search warrants

    If they had all of this evidence it should have been put before a Federal Grand Jury. Search warrant and arrest warrants should be issued. A judge being able to freeze assets in secret on his own say so is scary. A clear violation of the fourth admendment ,not that the Supremes will do anything about it.

  3. Keith T

    It is good to see somebody's government doing its job

    Good work FTC.

  4. Charles

    @Hud Dunlap

    So how does a search and seizure get done against a person known to have a court mole? If the mole gets wind of this, the suspect can cut bait and run, defeating the search order. And they can't go after the mole because that is itself a warning to the suspect.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Heavy Handed?

    "The US Federal Trade Commission obtained the court order against 3FN.net [...] it commanded all companies providing upstream services to 3FN to immediately pull the plug."

    So much for net neutrality.

    "The order was issued in secret to prevent the operators from being able to destroy evidence or find new hosts, something FTC attorneys said was necessary given the extreme nature of the data it hosted."

    Because anybody who shares an ISP with paedophiles is obviously evil. There couldn't possibly be innocent people unknowingly using a crooked ISP for legitimate business.

  6. Neoc
    Unhappy

    Vaguely uneasy.

    'Am I the only one who found the reference to the photos of under-age rape as "promising" just a little unsettling on first reading? Even now, after re-reading it and understanding that he meant "promising for the purpose of prosecution", I still get a stomach wobble.

    I do wish these people would double-check the wording of their statements before uttering them.

  7. David Wilkinson

    Good job for the FTC

    I think this is within the FTC's mandate and they were acting appropriately.

    I feel sorry for any innocent customers that got shut down, but that can happen for any number of reasons, technical incompetence, poor site security, fire, flood, bankruptcy, now you can add FTC violations to the list.

    I maintain a couple unimportant websites and I still write shell scripts to dump the databases ... zip them up with all the files and FTP the archive to a 2nd hosting account.

    You can get a cheap shared hosting account with FTP for $8/month. It took me a day to learn look up the mysql command line stuff and learn how to write a basic bash script.

    Rule of thumb if its not in three places ... it doesn't exist!

  8. John Smith Gold badge
    Alert

    Caution. Kiddie orn site is an excellent credit card scam

    CC fraud charges stuff to site.

    You query massive payout.

    They email the site that billed you is "littles-raped.com" or whatever.

    Site takes chunk off the top from CC fraudster or is actually doing the fraud themselves.

    You site tight and pray they don't get raided and you are listed as kiddie fiddler.

    This lot did do sound pretty nasty. But I am *highly* suspicious of such blatently names sites. Child molesters seem by nature to be devious and secretive. This looks more like a cover to funnel cash out of compromised credit card and bank accounts.

  9. Peter Gordon

    @Neoc

    You've totally misunderstood. The text on the site promised horrible pictures. The guy didn't find the text promising.

  10. Dan

    @Neoc

    Read it again mate. I get the impression that th intended meaning was more along the lines of:

    "there was text on the dodgy sites that promised illegal kiddy porn pics"

    rather than the pics themselves being promising.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    About time, but still just scratching the surface of a massive problem

    I think this is brilliant news, but this ISP is nonetheless just small fry....so in the immortal words of The Wolf, "...well let's not start sucking each other's dicks quite yet..."

    I can't muster up even a smidgen of sympathy at all for any ISP that hosts domains named little-incest.com and littles-raped.com and provides content that causes harm or promotes harm, and especially harm to children. Stuff net neutrality, if you're a sicko hosting web sites promoting harm to kids then you need to be taken down.

    And it amazes me that ICANN doesn't have a name filter to catch these domain name registrations. It's pretty much clear what a domain like that is going to be used for. I'm as open minded as they come, but that kind of disgusting crap needs removing so we're not all surfing in massive feckin toilet.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @A/C Heavy Handed?

    No not really.

    If you ate at a resturant used by a drugs cartel for money laundering, do you not close it down, just in case you upset some diners?

    As for the judge issuing a warrant in secret, it's not in the slightest bit uncommon, if it may compromise a case by making it public. Hell in the UK, a high ranking officer can issue a warrant in special circumstances.

  13. Pete
    Thumb Down

    Maybe

    the puke ray would be suitably therapeutic in regular 10s bursts.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good Work

    The more of this that happens the better.

    Pull them all down.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So if I read this right...

    ...they didn't actually find any child porn, just text that promised links to child porn? Knowing 'hacker' types, I'd say that pages like this are more than likely there purely to lure the less desirable netizens to click on links that install viruses and trojans. OR even just plain steal CC details.

    Pretty clever actually - someone signs up to kiddyfiddler.com with their CC and it's really a scam, their cards get maxed out - but are they going to report it to the police? Victimless crime.

  16. N

    Good effort

    Nice one FTC, just feel sorry for the (few ?) legit clients with domains on their servers

  17. Graham Marsden
    Thumb Down

    @Privateofcourse

    > that kind of disgusting crap needs removing so we're not all surfing in massive feckin toilet.

    If you have *PROOF* of crime, prosecute the crime.

    But when you start removing "disgusting crap" you end up with the nonsense of the "Dangerous Pictures Act" banning so-called "extreme pornography" because some people find that "disgusting or abhorrent", not because there's any evidence of harm.

    And don't forget all those innocent people who were victims of false accusations of downloading kiddie porn by Operation Ore after their credit card details were stolen...

  18. JC
    Happy

    Can't feel sorry

    Can't feel sorry for "legit", meaning innocent, clients with domains on their servers, as they didn't bother to research who they were doing business with and helped scumbags profit even more. So they lose their site for a brief period, a period they should have used initially to find a more upstanding host.

  19. This post has been deleted by its author

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Christopher Webb

    Exactly! And I think some of us have become so open minded that our brains have fallen out.

    @Graham Marsden

    The rights of individuals are extremely important, of course they are, I totally agree, and only a fool would challenge that premise, but sometimes they simply don't take precedence of the rights of those who are more vulnerable.

    Children have an absolute right not to be traded for the sexual gratification (and worse) of others, and those rights have to be rigidly enforced using definitive action. And our law enforcement agencies have the unenviable task of trying to stop these crimes, so almost inevitably people do occasionally get caught in the crossfire, but that should never be a reason not to do anything at all, even if we instinctively recoil at that idea - none of us wants to be one of the innocent victims caught in the crossfire, so we automatically want to protect every innocent bystander, which of course in our minds includes us. That's a normal human reaction as far as I see it. But if your own child had been abducted by a child porn ring and was being traded on the Internet I think you'd soon have a different view of things, and that's where I think we all have to take responsibility.

    It is up to everyone else to support the efforts of those who try to stop this crap from happening, and if in the process someone's rights gets trampled on then we have to put that right, but carry on regardless.

    Whilst it is completely normal to want to sure up our own rights, and try to protect ourselves from the possibility of ever becoming a victim, we have to be sure that be don't inadvertently deny others their rights by rigidly protecting our own, so there sometimes has to be a compromise. No system is perfect, we have to allow for this, and whilst this kind of abominable crime continues to flourish I for one am willing to say to the agencies who have to deal with these problems, just do what you need to do to get the job done. However, I would never have said this 10 or even 5 years ago, but the softly softly approach just isn't working, and the more procrastination the worse things get.

    You simply cannot apply reason and fairness to every situation. In an ideal world that would be great, but to do so in this reality just gives carte blanche to predators, those with no conscience that don't have concerns about exploiting your weaknesses for their own gain.

    Life's a bitch but I didn't make up the rules.

  21. Greg Trocchia

    @Privateofcourse

    "You simply cannot apply reason and fairness to every situation."

    Yes you can, unless that is, you *want* results that are irrational and unfair by definition.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Greg Trocchia

    Not to be deliberately antagonistic, but you rather confirmed one of my points!

    Try reasoning with a total moron when he's thumping you to the ground and kicking you in the face! What's the probability that your efforts won't get you very far? You may be someone that says, "stop, this isn't achieving anything, can we talk through?" when someone is attacking you, but I don't fancy your chances much using this approach. Idealism is fine, but it doesn't always pan out practically, and if you cannot practically implement your ideals then you will fall victim to your own rigid principles of reason and fairness...when they patently do no one, including you, any good. You do not reason with an idiot, You do not use fairness to win a rigged game. Old clichés seem to work here: in extreme situations you sometimes need to fight fire with fire.

    Our own laws are now protecting criminal elements. They often serve to work against our own objectives. Our own sense of fair play is in fact our weakness and this weakness is glaring and it allows amoral criminals to run amok.

    Yes, I believe in reason, and fair play, but I also believe in laying aside those tools when needs must!

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