Last week we learned that Nintendo was stopping its Swapnote feature on the 3DS, with no concrete explanation other than “children were passing around offensive material.” This led me to believe it was crusty pedophiles who were sending pictures of their penises, but apparently it’s worse than that.
I was right, or so it seems – but it was actually the reverse, if these allegations are confirmed to be true. In two separate news reports via Kotaku, the first of which involving  two older Japanese men (49 and 36), were apparently meeting a 12 year old girl on multiple occasions in different hotel rooms, and they didn’t meet up to play their 3DS’es together.
What happened in those hotel rooms is described as “improper acts,” but we can only assume they had their way with her. Something of note – she did not meet them through SwapNote, rather through an online dating site that she accessed via her 3DS’s web browser. This report came from Yomiuri Online, while a second report from Mainichi paints a very different picture. A 44 year old man was getting two girls, aged 11 and 12, to send nude photos to him through SwapNote. He has allegedly confessed to these acts.
The interesting piece of information to take from both of these reports is that one mentions SwapNote while the other doesn’t. Another key fact is that all of the girls’ parents turned off the 3DS’s internet capabilities, only to have them all turn the functionality back on later.
So what’s next – is Nintendo going to make adding people as friends even harder/annoying than it already is?
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