Amazon and Google among platforms slammed for ads on child abuse sites

US senators have raised concerns in a letter to digital advertising platforms such as Amazon and Google after a report revealed they allowed ads served on websites to host child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Conducted by ad quality and transparency platform Adalytics, the report revealed that major advertisers such as Interpublic Group (IPG), Google, Amazon and Starbucks had their ads placed on a website that has been known for hosting some CSAM since at least 2021. The report was shared exclusively with US Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal before public release.

Based on the report, Blackburn and Blumenthal sent letters detailing the report to adtech vendors Google and Amazon, ad verification firms DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science, and industry standards bodies Media Rating Council and Trustworthy Accountability Group. 

In their letter to Amazon, Blackburn and Blumenthal raised concerns about the company's technology being used to monetise websites that host CSAM. It cited Adalytics’ report that Amazon has facilitated the placement of advertising on imgbb.com, a website that has been known to host CSAM since at least 2021.

“The dissemination of CSAM is a heinous crime that inflicts irreparable harm on its victims. When digital advertising technologies place advertisements on websites that are known to host such activity, they have in effect created a funding stream that perpetuates criminal operations and irreparable harm to our children,” the letter states. 

The instances of advertisements being served on a website known to host illegal CSAM via Amazon’s advertising technologies violate Amazon’s own policies, according to the report. While the production, distribution, sale, and possession of materials depicting CSAM violates federal law, Amazon’s own policies further prohibit ads from appearing on websites that host “illegal content” and “adult and explicit sexual content”.

“It remains unclear, however, whether Amazon has ceased its relationship with the website identified in this report, and it is deeply troubling that you have continued to monetise the website for at least three years since NCMEC first identified the website as a purveyor of CSAM.”

Blackburn and Blumenthal have cited Adalytics’ report that many advertisers reportedly cannot readily access page URL-level reports that would allow them to identify which pages their ads have appeared on, including if they had appeared on imgbb.com. Imgbb.com is an anonymous photo-sharing website that hosts user-generated content. Without access to the URLs on which their ads appeared, advertisers cannot understand whether their ads have appeared on content that violates Amazon’s policies, their policies, or federal law.

The letter has urged Amazon to take immediate action to ensure that it is “not funding these heinous crimes against children”. 

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According to the Adalytics report, advertisements for major brands such as the US Department of Homeland Security, Starbucks, PepsiCo, Honda, and Audible, were found on the two implicated websites. It also identified nearly a dozen ad vendors involved, such as Amazon, Google, Criteo, and Microsoft.

The report indicated that researchers observed the ads while analysing a page crawled by a bot from URLScan.io, which originated from an IP address in Italy. As the bot took a screenshot, it was shown an ad for the US Department of Homeland Security delivered via Google’s DV360 platform. Upon discovering the URL associated with CSAM, the researchers alerted federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, DHS, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and other organisations.

The report comes after Congress decided to pass a new legislation to protect kids from various online risks, including CSAM and data privacy violations. One legislation, the Stop CSAM Act, would request platforms to report CSAM and conduct annual transparency reports. The bill would also impose new legal liabilities for platforms that knowingly host, store, promote, or facilitate CSAM.

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