90-Percent Of Pedophilia Complaints In Brazil Come From Google’s Orkut

Apr 10, 2008 at 9:44am ET by Barry Schwartz

Brazil Senate orders Google to identify website pedophiles via AFP reports a Brazilian Senate has ordered Google to hand over the profiles of 3,261 suspected pedophiles yesterday. However, according to The Inquirer, Google is willing to help Brazilian authorities but not hand over users’ personal information.

Sergio Suiama, Sao Paulo’s federal prosecutor, said that over the past two years, “nearly 90 percent of the 56,000 pedophilia complaints on the Internet were related to Orkut.”

Suiama added, “The dissemination of Orkut in Brazil has turned the country into a distributor of child pornography and Google doesn’t seem to be worried by that.”

In fact, 55-percent of Orkut’s users are Brazilian.

This saga between Google/Orkut and Brazilian authorities has been going on for over two years now. For past history on this, go here and continue clicking backwards in time.

Postscript: Google shares info on suspected pedophiles from News.com clarifies that by court order, Google is required to hand over user profiles. In fact, Google is handing over 3,261 suspected pedophiles to Brazilian authorities.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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