Experts say Amazon's encrypted chat app Wickr is flooded with child sex abuse images and the company is not taking basic safety measures to prevent sharing
Court records show that Wickr Me has become part of a toolkit used by people who exploit children. Tweets: @benjamingoggin , @benjamingoggin , @benjamingoggin , @anthony , @mattmday , and @jasonabbruzzese Tweets: Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : NEW: Amazon has a major child porn problem on its encrypted chat app Wickr, and the tech giant isn't doing much to stop it. I combed through 72 child porn prosecutions involving Wickr from the last 5 years to understand the issue. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : The problem is clear on other social platforms. On Reddit, daily posts appear in subreddits devoted to Wickr, soliciting child sex abuse material alongside Wickr handles. The problem is so bad, one community devoted to meth use banned Wickr screen names. https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Benjamin Goggin / @benjamingoggin : On Twitter, I found Wickr handles next to posts that appeared to be selling child porn. In this post “map” refers to ‘minor attracted person.’ “Aam” stands for ‘adult attracted minor.’ https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : NBC News reviewed court documents from 72 state and federal child sexual abuse or child pornography prosecutions where the defendant allegedly used Amazon's messenger app Wickr. Almost none of the criminal complaints reviewed note cooperation from Amazon https://www.nbcnews.com/... Matt Day / @mattmday : “Wickr ... self-reported only 15 instances of child sexual abuse imagery, despite experts and law enforcement saying there's clear use of the app by people trading such material online.” https://www.nbcnews.com/... Jason Abbruzzese / @jasonabbruzzese : Child sexual abuse material is a problem on a lot of platforms. But as @BenjaminGoggin found, Wickr, a messaing app owned by Amazon, looks to be a destination for CSAM. And the app has not taken some of the steps that other encrypted apps have. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon bought encrypted messaging app Wickr in 2021, and the reporting by NBC News' Benjamin Goggin — built on 72 US prosecutions over five years — now shows its consumer product Wickr Me has become a distribution channel for child sexual abuse material with no basic safety measures in place. The playbook is familiar: Kik spent years failing to act on child abuse on its anonymous messaging platform after being warned, and the same enforcement gap has since surfaced at mainstream giants like Instagram.
The story also lands while Wickr is already under a separate cloud: record keepers and watchdogs warned months earlier that Wickr's auto-deletion features help agencies like CBP sidestep transparency requirements. Two distinct accountability problems — content safety and records compliance — now attach to the same Amazon-owned product.
First-order effects
- Amazon owns a flagship encrypted app that prosecutors cite in dozens of child exploitation cases, putting its trust-and-safety posture and its government-facing Wickr business under direct scrutiny.
- Law enforcement and child-safety researchers gain documented court-record evidence that Wickr Me lacks even baseline detection and reporting, sharpening the case against the company.
Second-order effects
- The finding extends a pattern already documented across the ecosystem — from coordinated grooming and extortion networks operating openly on Discord and Telegram to livestreaming apps on Apple's App Store and Google Play advertising child sexual abuse — forcing Apple, Google, and Meta to defend their own review and takedown pipelines.
- Encryption and anonymity features become political ammunition: every new disclosure of abuse on an encrypted app strengthens arguments for scanning mandates and weakens the platforms' privacy positioning.
Third-order effects
- If the Kik-to-Wickr arc repeats, encrypted consumer messaging heads toward regulated safety obligations — mandated reporting, hash-sharing, or client-side detection — eroding the default of unscannable private channels.
- Platform accountability shifts from voluntary moderation to auditability: companies whose products enable both abuse and opaque record-keeping face converging legal and procurement pressure, as the watchdog concerns over auto-deletion already foreshadow.
The trend: Encrypted and anonymous messaging platforms are becoming the next front in child-safety accountability, as regulators and investigators move from social feeds into private channels that were built without safety infrastructure.