A Central Florida woman offers a warning that movie titles for children may actually be hardcore pornography in disguise on a popular file-sharing service, according to a Local 6 News report.
The report featured Sally Rodriguez, who was recently surfing the Internet with her daughter, Delanee, 7.
Rodriguez and her daughter used a file-sharing service called Limewire.com. The service can be downloaded and installed on computers for free.
Limewire, like other file-sharing services, is a hub host -- meaning you put in keywords and it does a general search, connects the user to other users who have the file and then usually disconnects from the process, the Local 6 News report said.
Rodriguez said when she tried to download the Walt Disney World title Little Mermaid she actually downloaded pornography.
"We went in to download music and videos, put in some cartoons for my daughter to download for her to watch," Rodriguez said. "The more I went on and saw teen things on there, with children, with animals I had to do something about it," Rodriguez said.
Local 6 reporter Steven Cooper used Limewire and tried to download several Disney titles, including Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. Both led to graphic porn sites, the report said.
"There are other people who still have the Limewire (version) I have," Rodriguez said. "How many people out there have that?"
Orange County sheriff's computer crimes Lt. Kevin Stenger said many people still have it, Cooper said.
"The difficult part is you're talking millions and millions of users," Stenger said.
Stenger said that Limewire could be used in a crime if an adult contacts a child through IM or e-mail and entices the child to watch pornography, particularly child porn by posting it on Limewire.
"There is a potential for three different felonies there," Stenger said. "The fact that he is in possession of it, the fact he sent it to a child and the fact that he was soliciting a child on the Internet."
"I'm not saying Limewire needs to shut down but they need to take care of this," Rodriguez said.
Cooper said parental controls are not built to work with file-sharing programs. There are some monitoring programs that can be installed that will track where your child goes on Internet.
"The best thing is to supervise your children and get the computer out of their bedrooms and into a common area," Cooper said.
Limewire did not respond to Cooper's inquiries.
Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.
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