Alibaba, Amazon, Snapdeal Named In Indian Illegal Wildlife Trade List

Asia has an illegal wildlife trading problem, and some of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms are at the center of it.

The Indian government has released a list of 106 websites that are currently being used to trade wild animals and their body parts. It’s a comprehensive record, that covers all the top names in e-commerce, including Alibaba, Amazon, Snapdeal, eBay and even YouTube.

The list was made as part of a monitoring effort by India’s central government, who scan the sites to crackdown on illegal trading and other cybercrime.

While companies, including Alibaba and Amazon, have made overt commitments to removing accounts and cracking down on trading networks within their own systems, e-commerce sites continue to act as a tool for traders in everything from drugs to ivory.

Several Chinese tech companies, including Alibaba, Sina and Tencent, have signed zero-tolerance policies toward illegal wildlife trading  since the Chinese government stepped up their monitoring efforts in 2012.

According to a report by advocacy group Traffic, illegal wildlife advertisements discovered on Chinese sites dropped sharply from a peak of almost 60,000 in 2012 to under 10,000 in late 2014. However the report also notes that social media platforms could now be taking a lump of the trades that were once found on e-commerce sites. WeChat, the country’s most popular social media tool, is commonly used to facilitate private sales.

Here’s a full list of the sites named by the Indian government: