This study identifies the presence of human trafficking indicators in a UK-based sample of sex workers who advertise their services online. To this end, we developed a crawling and scraping software that enabled the collection of information from 17, 362 advertisements for female sex workers posted on the largest dedicated platform for sex work services in the UK. We then established a set of 10 indicators of human trafficking and a transparent and replicable methodology through which to detect their presence in our sample. Most of the advertisements (58.3%) contained only one indicator, while 3,694 of the advertisements (21.3%) presented 2 indicators of human trafficking. Only 1.7% of the advertisements reported three or more indicators, while there were no advertisements that featured more than four. 3, 255 advertisements (19.0%) did not contain any indicators of human trafficking. Based on this analysis, we propose that this approach constitutes an effective screening process for quickly identifying suspicious cases, which can then be examined by more comprehensive and accurate tools to identify if human trafficking is occurring. We conclude by calling for more empirical research into human trafficking indicators.

这项研究确定了在英国在线宣传其服务的性工作者样本中存在人口贩运指标。为此，我们开发了一种抓取软件，可以从英国最大的性工作服务专用平台上发布的 17, 362 个女性性工作者广告中收集信息。然后，我们建立了一套 10 项人口贩运指标和一种透明且可复制的方法，通过该方法可以检测他们在我们的样本中的存在。大多数广告 (58.3%) 仅包含一项指标，而 3,694 条广告 (21.3%) 显示了 2 项人口贩运指标。只有 1.7% 的广告报告了三个或更多指标，而没有广告超过四个。3, 255 条广告 (19. 0%) 不包含任何人口贩卖指标。基于这一分析，我们建议这种方法构成了一个快速识别可疑案件的有效筛选过程，然后可以通过更全面和准确的工具进行检查，以确定是否正在发生人口贩运。最后，我们呼吁对人口贩运指标进行更多的实证研究。