By By Sheila Dang
(Reuters) – New Mexico said on Thursday it filed a lawsuit against Snapchat owner Snap Inc (NYSE:SNAP), alleging that the messaging app’s policies and design features facilitate the sharing of child sexual exploitation material.
The lawsuit brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said a months-long investigation found that Snapchat was a primary platform for sextortion, in which a predator coerces a minor into sending explicit photos or videos and threatens to distribute the content unless more sexual content or money is paid.
Snap did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Snapchat, which is wildly popular with teens and young users, is known for messages that disappear in 24 hours.
“Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and they have created a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold, and stored indefinitely,” Torrez said in a statement.
As part of its investigation, the state’s Department of Justice opened a decoy Snapchat account for a 14-year-old named Heather, which exchanged messages with an account called “child.rape” and others with explicit names.
Investigators also found 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse content on dark websites, saying that Snapchat was “by far the largest source of images and videos among the dark web sites investigated.”
New Mexico previously sued Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) in December on similar allegations of failing to protect children from sexual abuse and predation.