What actions should be taken in order to notify authorities about illegal online activity

Question

At tumblr I've stumbled upon a post which contents bothers me a lot and if it has any relation to reality it's 100% illegal (someone offers to have sex with his children).

I'm not a citizen of US and I don't know anything about the nationality of the author of the post - I'm mentioning this because my understanding is that tumblr obeys to US laws.

My question is - what set of actions I should take to make sure that this somehow end up as an registered and investigated crime? I mean I can reach tumblr support and report severe abuse however this doesn't guarantee this this will go further rather than just banning the author.

I mean have I encountered something like this offline I'd just call police.

Answer 1

As a non US citizen you can certainly file a report with Tumblr, a US-based company. And the post you mention would appear to violate US law, at very least.

But there is no way to guarantee that that kind of post will be investigated as a criminal manner or anyone formally charged; chances are very good the Tumbler account was opened under a fake name, the user made an effort to hide their IP address, took other obfuscation efforts, and any sort of investigation will be difficult to undertake. Even if the post appears to advocate a serious crime, the authorities will have to decide if there is a reasonable chance to identity the real person behind it, develop evidence and have a prosecutor file charges.

The best you can do is go to https://www.tumblr.com/abuse and file, and Tumblr support should look at it and hopefully take action. But keep in mind there are many instances of posts that at very least violate Tumblr's TOS and at most are crimes, and the post may exist for some time, and no real investigation will be opened.