Comparing paedophile activity in different P2P systems

TL;DR

This study compares paedophile activity in two major P2P systems, extit{Kad} and extit{eDonkey}, revealing significantly lower paedophile query rates in extit{Kad} through large-scale data analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology for comparing paedophile activity across different P2P systems and provides the first large-scale comparative analysis between extit{Kad} and extit{eDonkey}.

Findings

Fewer paedophile queries in extit{Kad} (0.09%) compared to extit{eDonkey} (0.25%).

Developed a validated tool for detecting paedophile-related queries.

Monitored hundreds of thousands of queries over several days.

Abstract

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are widely used to exchange content over the Internet. Knowledge on paedophile activity in such networks remains limited while it has important social consequences. Moreover, though there are different P2P systems in use, previous academic works on this topic focused on one system at a time and their results are not directly comparable. We design a methodology for comparing \kad and \edonkey, two P2P systems among the most prominent ones and with different anonymity levels. We monitor two \edonkey servers and the \kad network during several days and record hundreds of thousands of keyword-based queries. We detect paedophile-related queries with a previously validated tool and we propose, for the first time, a large-scale comparison of paedophile activity in two different P2P systems. We conclude that there are significantly fewer paedophile queries in \kad than in \edonkey (approximately 0.09% \vs 0.25%).