After a man was arrested in June for allegedly operating what appeared to be Japan's largest child pornography website, experts believe police are making progress in unmasking anonymous predators who engage in illegal and immoral activities on the darknet.

Facing a huge challenge because of the difficulty of identifying people who conceal their location by lurking in the recesses of the internet, the Kyoto Prefectural Police secured their breakthrough due to flaws in the exploitative website operator's own procedures.

Police were able to track down Mitsugu Ono, a 59-year-old man who they suspect operated the site named Lollitter2.onion, through data analysis and by contacting users who, like the investigators, had gone through the site's compulsory registration process.