Nintendo’s Letter Box service used by paedophiles

Nintendo has shut down their Letter Box messaging service on the 3DS handheld console after it was revealed that paedophiles were using the service to lure young children into performing sexual acts.

Nintendo issued a press release soon after announcing the end of the service, citing that “some consumers, including minors, have been exchanging their friend codes on Internet bulletin boards and then using Swapnote (known as Nintendo Letter Box in other regions) to exchange offensive material.”

The cases are both located in Japan. The first case relates to a 44 year-old man living in the Aichi Prefecture region of Japan, who allegedly used the service to coerce two young girls, aged 11 and 12, to send nude photos to him. While the investigation is ongoing, Aichi police have reported that the man confessed to the act.

The second case is in Yokohama, Japan and involves two men aged 49 and 36 who allegedly lured a 12 year-old girl into a hotel room on mutiple occasions in 2013, using the Letter Box service to arrange for meetings and exchanging pictures. News portal Yomiuri Online reports that the girl used the browser on her 3DS to visit a dating site and exchanged Letter Box IDs with the two men.

In both cases, it has been reported that the parents of the children involved switched off the internet capabilities of their 3DS consoles, only to have the girls later turn the features back in through a hardware reset.

Nintendo Japan has not clarified whether the Letter Box shut-down is directly related to the cases currently under investigation.