Microsoft finds child erotica on user’s SkyDrive, tips off authorities and gets him arrested

In a recent report, a SkyDrive user down in Florida by the name of David Stuart was arrested on April 15th of this year for possession of child pronography. Turns out, Microsoft’s internal security found that Stuart had uploaded over 3,000 “child erotica” images to his Microsoft SkyDrive account, which is a free cloud storage service.

“On March 5, Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond, Wash., reported suspicious activity on David Stuart’s SkyDrive account to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. The organization’s “Cybertip reports” were then forwarded to the Central Florida Internet Crimes Against Children task force, which notified Largo police,” the Tampa Bay times reports.

Most of the photos had young victims wearing adult clothing and make-up. When traced, the photos were produced by websites that are no longer online. The suspect’s wife, on the other hand, does not believe this to be true. “He’s a very loving father and a good provider to us. It’s not true,” wife Sharon Stuart adds.

Thanks to federal law, companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter must report possible child pornography on storage applications and social media. “The Internet has provided more opportunities for individuals to trade these images and, at the same time, more opportunities for law enforcement to detect these violations,” Michelle Collins, vice president of the NCMEC’s exploited children division stated.

Stuart was booked into Pinellas County Jail and his bail was set at $75,000. He faces his pretrial court hearing on June 24th.