Boystown was a

child pornography Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a chi ...

website run through the

Tor network Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

as a

hidden service Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

Background

As of May 2021, the website was considered the largest international

darknet A dark net or darknet is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social ne ...

platform to host child pornography. The website had 400,000 registered users. The website was found to have what prosecutors considered some of the most severe sexual abuse images of toddlers.

Website content

The website featured various forums and chats for communication. The illegal images and videos were posted on the forums and the chats where members were able to communicate with one another. There were two chat services provided, one called "Lolipub" and the other was known as "BOYSPUB". The child abuse materials exchanged between users were of young children and toddlers, most of which were boys, from around the world. The child pornographic content had various categories including "Art", "hardcore", "kindergarten", and "toddler".

Website investigation

The website was investigated by a German police task force with cooperation from Europol and international law enforcement agencies. The platforms administrators and users were under investigation for months.

Agencies involved in the investigation

The following agencies took part in the investigation: * : Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), Australian Federal Police (AFP), Queensland Police Service (QPS) * :

Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...

* : Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt) *: National Police (Politie) * : Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Arrests

There were three primary suspects that were discovered and identified during the investigation: a 40-year-old man from

Paderborn Paderborn (; Westphalian: ''Patterbuorn'', also ''Paterboärn'') is a city in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader and ''Born'', an old German term for t ...

, a 49-year-old man from

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

and a 58-year-old man from

Northern Germany Northern Germany (german: link=no, Norddeutschland) is a linguistic, geographic, socio-cultural and historic region in the northern part of Germany which includes the coastal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lower Saxony an ...

who was living in

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...

. The suspects allegedly acted as administrators for the website and gave advice to its users on how to evade law enforcement while using the platform. Another suspect was a 64-year-old man from

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

who was accused of being one of the most active users uploading over 3,500 posts.

Website shutdown

In mid-April 2021, the website was raided by authorities and shut down.

References

{{Tor hidden services Underground culture Defunct Tor hidden services Child pornography websites Defunct darknet markets Erotica and pornography websites Internet properties established in 2019 Internet properties disestablished in 2021 Child pornography crackdowns