Zero Trafficking LLC produces commercially available data in a variety of formats. The below documents our U.S. Illicit Massage Business datasets. 

​

1. DATA THEORY 

 

Zero Trafficking produces human trafficking network intelligence by collecting, synthesizing, and analyzing data from commercial sex marketplaces to identify potential trafficking rings. We draw down on those targets through open source intelligence techniques and make the threat selectors we produce available to risk analysts, government agencies, and more through our data feeds and custom data requests. 

 

(a) Collecting & Synthesizing: Zero Trafficking identifies digital sources of commercial sex data relevant to human trafficking investigations and collects information from those platforms through a combination of machine and manual aggregation techniques. When the collected data has been cleansed, it is distributed to analytic teams for evaluation. 

 

(b) Analyzing: Zero Trafficking uses industry standard and company-enhanced indices of human trafficking to flag potential trafficking rings within the data, tasking our competent team of investigators to perform a thorough open source investigation. 

 

(c) Data Feeds: Zero Trafficking sells collections of human trafficking source data as well as much smaller high-confidence datasets on the trafficking rings our human analysts discover. 

 

2. ILLICIT MASSAGE BUSINESS DATA

 

Zero Trafficking’s Illicit Massage Business (IMB) dataset is a list of U.S. businesses suspected of selling commercial sex. 

 

(a) Collection Approach: Using their expertise in counter-trafficking investigations, the Zero Trafficking team has identified select digital platforms where commercial sex is bought and sold in the U.S. Our team machine-sources data from those platforms, aggregating it into a new dataset each month. 

 

(b) Completeness: This dataset consists of user-generated content from digital platforms, and has not been vetted in its entirety. Some operational IMBs may not be on this list. This data refreshes monthly and spans the entire U.S. Historic data is available from October 2021 forward. A businesses’ failure to appear on this list should not be taken as insurmountable proof that it is legitimate. 

 

(c) Accuracy: Zero Trafficking heavily utilizes this IMB dataset to identify potential human trafficking rings across the country. Most businesses on this list that we have investigated have documentable ties to the commercial sex industry. However, because the dataset consists of user-generated content from digital platforms some data may no longer be up to date. A businesses’ appearance on this list should not be taken as insurmountable proof that it is engaged in human trafficking or other illicit activity. 

 

(d) Schema: The following fields are available, and should be used in the assessment of a leads’ value. Businesses with very few reviews or very low star ratings are less likely to be engaged in human trafficking or other illicit activity than a highly reviewed business. 

 

Place Name - the operation’s storefront name

Address - physical street address where business operates

State - the state where this business is located

Latitude - the coordinates where business is located

Longitude - the coordinates where business is located

Reviews - the number of reviews this business has been given by commercial sex buyers

Phone - the phone number this business uses

Open/Closed - whether the business is reported to still be operational

Description - the description buyers give of staffing options

Rate - house fees

Stars - average number of stars (out of five) given by customers

Last Updated - the last date this businesses' listing information was changed

​

(e) Beta Risk Score: Zero Trafficking is developing a risk scoring algorithm (currently in the beta testing phase) which attempts to use known markers of human trafficking and business paterns on these platforms to score businesses’ risk against each other. Documentation for this scoring system will be made available when it is ready for deployment. 

​

​