Code word usage in the online ivory trade across four European Union member states
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Code word usage in the online ivory trade across four
European Union member states
S A R A A L F I N O and D A V I D L . R O B E R T S
Abstract Illegal wildlife trade is a rapidly evolving environ- global reach, the internet has become the focus of concern
mental crime that is expanding through e-commerce. in control of the illegal wildlife trade, with trade occurring
Because of the nature of the internet, detection of online il- over a variety of platforms, including auction websites
legal wildlife and enforcement has proven to be difficult and (Hernandez-Castro & Roberts, ) and social media
time-consuming, often based on manual searches through (Yu & Jai, ; Hinsley et al., ); little has been found
the use of keywords. As a result of scrutiny, traders in ele- on the dark web (Harrison et al., ; Roberts &
phant ivory now use code words to disguise the trade, thus Hernandez-Castro, ). Governments and businesses
adding an additional level of complexity. Here we look at the have been called upon to take action to tackle the growing
use of code words and phrases associated with the online illegal online wildlife trade (WWF & Dalberg, ).
trade in elephant ivory items on eBay across four European However, identifying suspected illegalities online is time
Union (EU) member states. Results show that, in spite of consuming, often involving manual keyword searches
eBay’s ban on ivory, elephant ivory is still being offered for (Hernandez-Castro & Roberts, ).
sale across all four sites we searched ( ivory items offered In the online trade, the term ivory is used both for the
by sellers during January– February ). Beyond the material (including elephant, mammoth, hippopotamus,
violation of eBay’s Terms and Conditions, other potential il- narwhal and walrus tusks, and sperm whale teeth) and for
legalities included offers for sale across international borders the colour. As such, use of the search term ‘ivory’ will result
without mention of CITES permit requirements, and the in a large proportion of unrelated items (Hernandez-Castro
offer of ivory that may be considered unworked, which & Roberts, ). Furthermore, with the push for businesses
violates EU regulations. Code word usage was found to be to ban the trade in ivory and adapt to current legislation
consistent across all four EU countries. Although the rise (e.g. eBay’s ban on items with . % ivory; Coghlan, ),
of online wildlife trade is of concern, the growth of global the trading community has developed a number of code
markets may homogenize conventions within trading words to disguise the trade. Added to this already challenging
communities, such as in this case the code words used. situation, it is unclear whether these code words are common
Homogenization of conventions may therefore offer oppor- within the trading community or specific to a particular
tunities for tackling the illegal online trade in wildlife. country, language or trading community.
In this study we analysed the use of code words for
Keywords CITES, code word, e-commerce, elephant,
elephant ivory (IFAW ; and used in a previous study:
enforcement, illegal wildlife trade, ivory, linguistics
Harrison et al., ) across eBay market places in four
linguistically different European Union (EU) countries.
Introduction Understanding how search terms associated with the illegal
wildlife trade, including code words, are used across differ-
T he illegal wildlife trade is a lucrative environmental
crime. The scale is vast and as a result estimating its ex-
tent is challenging. Current estimates suggest environmen-
ent languages will help inform future research into the
illegal online wildlife trade and streamline manual search
by law enforcers.
tal crime is worth as much as USD billion per year
(Nellemann et al., ), making it the fourth most valuable
Methods
illicit transnational trade after the trafficking of narcotics,
humans and counterfeit items (UNGA, ). With its The research was conducted on the open, publicly available,
auction website eBay, across four linguistically different
SARA ALFINO (Corresponding author) Durrell Institute of Conservation &
eBay market places, namely eBay UK (ebay.co.uk), eBay
Ecology, School of Anthropology & Conservation, Marlowe Building, France (ebay.fr), eBay Italy (ebay.it) and eBay Spain (ebay.
University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NR, UK es). eBay was chosen because previous studies had shown
E-mail sara.alfino@outlook.com
continuing trade in elephant ivory (e.g. Hernandez-Castro
DAVID L. ROBERTS* Kent Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Cyber Security,
School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
& Roberts, ) and it represented a stable platform used
across several countries. The specific market places were
*Also at: Durrell Institute of Conservation & Ecology, School of Anthropology &
Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK selected based on the linguistic abilities of SA, and because
Received November . Revision requested February . they fall within the EU, allowing free trade between
Accepted February . First published online September . member states.
Oryx, 2020, 54(4), 494–498 © 2018 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000406
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605318000406Code word usage 495
Following Harrison et al. () we consulted a list of A technical issue experienced by rater when using eBay’s
code words and phrases previously identified (IFAW, ) image zoom feature was identified as the main cause of dif-
as being associated with the online trade in ivory products. ference in classification of items. After reanalysis following
Of the code words, were selected; excluded words or the correction of the problem, agreement was achieved for
phrases were those that represented redundancy, were of the disputed items (k = ., P , .).
too generic or had an unreliable translation. Each code
word was translated from English to French, Italian and
Spanish. During the analysis each code word was anony- Characteristics of sale items
mized and assigned a random alphabetical letter, to avoid
compromising ongoing enforcement efforts. A total of , advertisements resulted from a search using
A systematic search was conducted over a -day period the code words across the four websites, leading to the
( January– February ; this was the time taken to con- identification of unique elephant ivory items. Of these,
duct a single search of each of the four websites using all the (.% of the total number of advertisements analysed
code words. For consistency, searches for a particular code on a country’s website) where found on eBay UK,
word were conducted at the same time across all four market (.%) on eBay France, (.%) on eBay Italy and
places, restricted to the Header and Description of the (.%) on eBay Spain. These items where offered for sale
advertisements, and the Antiques section. Each search was by unique sellers. Most sellers (n = , %) were offering
performed only once. All items of the search results were a single ivory item at the time of the survey, with a median of
scrutinized if the total number of items was , ,. In item per seller and a maximum of (Fig. ).
cases where searches resulted in . ,, a sample of the Of the items located outside the EU trading area,
first items were analysed, because of time availability. were in the USA and one was in Israel (Fig. a). All other
For each elephant ivory item identified, the details and items were located within the EU in the four countries of
sale characteristics (i.e. code word used, item number, study, except for a substantial number that were for sale in
seller’s username, item location, postage options and infor- Germany (n = , %). There was a significant difference in
mation regarding the object’s age and certifications) were the distribution of items on offer among the categories
recorded. Postage options were categorized into Within Within country and Within the rest of the EU in each of
country, Within the rest of the EU or Outside the EU. the four countries’ eBay sites (χ () = ., P , .), with
Given the lack of access to the physical items, identifica- the UK being underrepresented and Spain overrepresented
tion of elephant ivory items was based on the most precise in terms of numbers of items located within the EU. The cat-
available indicator, which was the presence of Schreger lines egory Outside the EU was excluded from the test because,
in the images (a unique structure indicative of elephant based on the data collected, it applied only to the UK.
ivory; Locke, ), the only other characteristic being the In terms of the postage options available for the items
shape of the item in the case of unworked ivory. An alterna- whose physical location fell within the four countries of
tive option that was not used was to discount other materials study (n = for the UK, n = for France, n = for Italy
associated with ivory, such as man-made materials, bone, and n = for Spain), there was a significant difference
horn and antlers, and other ivories, including hippo- across countries (χ() = ., P , .), with Spain being
potamus, narwhal, sperm whale and walrus, based on overrepresented for number of items for sale within the
attributes specific to them (e.g. shape; Espinoza & Mann, EU (Fig. b). Because of several low expected counts
). A -person Kappa analysis was performed using a (.%), a Fisher’s exact test was also conducted, producing
sample of items to test identification consistency for a similar result (P , .).
elephant ivory among researchers (i.e. raters and ; rater Information regarding the declared age of the items and
was SA and rater was a colleague who had a similar certifications was found in the Header or Description of
amount of experience researching online trade in elephant most items (n = , %). One object was reported to
ivory). Cohen’s Kappa was calculated to confirm identifica- have an antiquity certificate, (%) were dated by sellers
tion consistency. Differences in the classification of items as pre-, although without using the term ‘pre-
were then discussed among researchers until an agreement convention’, and (%) were simply described as ‘an-
was reached. tiques’. A minority were also described as ‘vintage’ (n = ),
‘old’ (n = ) or ‘original’ (n = ). Only one Italian seller
Results reported holding CITES permits for both items found for
sale. Two sellers explicitly mentioned eBay’s Terms and
Identification consistency Conditions in relation to the sale of elephant ivory. Five of
the items where in the recognizable form of tusks, either
There was a good level of agreement between the two raters highly polished or carved but still obvious because of their
in identification of elephant ivory (k = ., P , .). shape.
Oryx, 2020, 54(4), 494–498 © 2018 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000406
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605318000406496 S. Alfino and D. L. Roberts
FIG. 1 Number of sellers with one or more ivory items for sale
across four eBay sites.
Code word and phrase usage
Of the code words analysed, six accounted for nearly %
(n = ) of the total number of elephant ivory items found
for sale across the four eBay websites (Table ). Code word
usage was compared across countries through the analysis of
their rank order. There were significant correlations be-
tween pairs of countries in the rank order of the code
word hits, with P , . for each pair (France vs Italy rs = FIG. 2 Number of ivory items found (a) per physical location of
., France vs Spain rs = ., Italy vs Spain rs = .), the item being offered and (b) per postage option on the four
except for all comparisons with the UK (UK vs France eBay websites searched.
rs = ., UK vs Italy rs = ., UK vs Spain rs = .),
which were significant at P , .. Results for code words
with a fixed sample size of items were excluded the EU. Presence of a CITES permit was mentioned by
from this analysis to avoid biases, as they are possibly not only one seller, who was not willing to send the two items
representative of the complete list of items. for sale outside the country. Five items of ivory were
found to potentially violate the EU’s regulations, as they
may be unworked ivory. Although in most cases the tusk
Discussion was carved, the shape was still obvious; defining what is
worked or unworked is contentious (DLR, pers. obs.).
Although ivory sale on eBay has been banned since According to the EU regulations Article w of Regulation
(Coghlan, ), elephant ivory is still being offered for (EC) No / defines worked ivory to be ‘specimens
sale across the four countries examined. However, as that were significantly altered from their natural raw
noted previously (Yeo et al., ), three-quarters of the state for jewellery, adornment, art, utility or musical instru-
trade was by sellers offering only a single item; although ments . . . Such specimens shall be considered as worked
one individual was offering items, the next highest num- only if they . . . require no further carving, crafting or manu-
ber of items offered by a single seller was six items (Fig. ). facture to affect their purpose’. Pre-convention antiques
Besides two sellers explicitly making the false statement that remain substantially unaltered from their natural state
that they complied with eBay’s Terms and Conditions (eBay (i.e. are still in the form of a tusk) do not qualify as ‘worked
a,b,c), a number of analysed items were potentially specimens’.
illegal for reasons other than the violation of the website’s There were differences between countries in the volume
regulations, specifically regarding international, EU and of ivory items for sale, with a higher volume in the UK. The
national legislation. Most sellers identified in this study lower overall volume of ivory items found on eBay France,
were willing to sell outside the EU, and made no explicit Italy and Spain could be a result of the sellers’ preferential
mention of whether the items were ‘pre-convention’ (% use of alternative auction websites. Unlike other countries,
were described as pre-) other than wording related to there were a higher number of items being offered from out-
the age of the item (e.g. ‘antique’). There was a further side the EU (mainly USA) into the UK. In contrast France,
lack of acknowledgement regarding the need for a CITES Italy and Spain had high numbers of items for sale from
permit for international trade, particularly into and out of other EU countries, notably from Germany.
Oryx, 2020, 54(4), 494–498 © 2018 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000406
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605318000406Code word usage 497
TABLE 1 Number of ivory items found per code word on the four Illegal wildlife trade is a lucrative transnational environ-
eBay websites searched. mental crime that warrants concerted control (Economic &
Number of ivory items found in each country
Social Council, ). The internet offers a global reach to
(% of the number of items searched per code sellers and buyers, and potentially presents enforcement
word) officers with a problem because of the scale. However, the
Code words
(anonymized) UK France Italy Spain global market may result in homogeneity of conventions
for communication. In the case of sale of elephant ivory,
A 30 (2.7) 5 (1.0) 2 (5.9) 3 (37.5)
B 11 (4.2) 2 (2.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) code word usage was comparable across the four countries
C 1 (25.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) and translatable across the four languages. It is less clear
D 2 (3.2) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) how these conventions translate across different online plat-
E 1 (0.7) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) forms, such as between free-text social media and classified
F* 2 (2.0) 1 (1.8) 0 (0.0) 1 (1.0) advert platforms (e.g. Facebook and Craigslist), or struc-
G 4 (2.9) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) tured auction sites (e.g. eBay), or other platforms that use
H 1 (9.1) 1 (2.6) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0)
limited text and/or tags (e.g. Instagram or Twitter). We
I 3 (0.1) 10 (0.1) 7 (0.3) 1 (0.9)
J* 10 (10.0) 13 (13.0) 17 (17.0) 31 (31.0)
therefore suggest that further research should explore the
K* 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) characteristics of these other platforms. However, if there
L* 7 (7.0) 13 (31.7) 16 (37.2) 14 (37.8) is a digital fingerprint of ivory trade across platforms,
M 15 (3.6) 10 (5.5) 3 (8.6) 0 (0.0) languages and countries, monitoring could potentially be
N* 1 (1.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) more manageable.
O 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0)
P 2 (0.5) 2 (0.1) 1 (2.0) 0 (0.0)
Q* 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) Acknowledgements The authors thank Emelyne Potier for taking
R* 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) part in the Kappa analysis, and Julio Hernandez-Castro for providing
S 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) technical advice in the design of the study.
*Code words whose search was limited to the first items.
Author contributions Conception of the project and writing of the
text: DLR; data collection and analysis: SA; writing of the manuscript:
both authors.
Identification of elephant ivory items based on the un-
ique Schreger lines was found to be consistent, even after
Conflicts of interest None.
only brief training. However, the number of photographs
and their quality was a limiting factor. Although Schreger
lines appear to be a simple and reproducible method for Ethical standards The study was approved by the University of
manual identification of online trade in elephant ivory, Kent’s Research and Ethics Committee (ref. no. 0321617).
basing identifications purely on the presence of Schreger
lines probably leads to an underestimation of the total
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