Guy Emailing Kid Porn Busted by ... Google

Big Brother is watching your email for illegal images
By Shelley Hazen,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 4, 2014 12:16 PM CDT
Guy Emailing Kid Porn Busted by ... Google
   (Shutterstock)

When registered Texas sex offender John Henry Skillern, 41, allegedly tried to email a pornographic image of a young girl to a friend, Google was watching with its email scanning software. "I can't see that information, I can't see that photo, but Google can," a detective with Houston’s Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce tells KHOU. Google tipped off authorities, who say they found porn images, as well as texts, emails, and video of children eating at the Denny’s where Skillern works as a cook. He now faces possession and promotion of child pornography charges; he’s already spent 20 years in jail for the sexual assault of an 8-year-old boy, the Daily Mail adds.

Google works with the Internet Watch Foundation and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to police the use of child porn on the Internet. The software that tracked Skillern’s emails—and which Google intends to improve—tags child porn images and then matches them to files sent through Gmail, the Daily Mail explains. Google also "trawls other platforms for known images of child sex abuse. We can then quickly remove them and report their existence to the authorities," a Google rep tells the BBC. (More Google stories.)

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