That sticker on your car is not signaling sex traffickers to target you, police say

A Louisiana sheriff’s office says online rumors that link white stickers on cars to sex-trafficking cartels are bogus.

In a Facebook post, the LaFourche Parish Sheriff’s Office says the stickers are commonly used by auto dealerships to identify which vehicles have been photographed for placement in online ads. The stickers are weather-proof and water-resistant, so they are likely to remain on vehicles for some time if not removed.

Some dealerships use inconspicuous dabs of paint for the same reason, the post says.

Rumors on social media attribute a far more sinister purpose to the stickers and dots, the post says, warning they are used by sex-trafficking rings to identify potential future targets.

“We have received calls from several concerned citizens after finding a sticker on their vehicle after reading the rumor on social media,” said Sheriff Craig Webre. “The reality is the sticker or dot is inconspicuous enough that you likely haven’t noticed it.”

But some people commenting on the post disputed the explanation, noting their vehicles had the stickers despite not recently being purchased or seviced.

In August, a Louisiana woman posted a warning to Facebook about the stickers, saying they had mysteriously turned up on vehicles owned by co-workers, speculating they might be GPS tracking devices of some kind.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says human trafficking, in which people are forced into labor or sex, is a multinational, multibillion-dollar industry, according to Time. It’s unclear how many human trafficking victims are in the United States, but an advocacy group managing the National Human Trafficking Hotline told the magazine that more than 33,000 cases have been reported in the last nine years.

Human-trafficking fears are widespread in the United States. In recent years, Snopes.com has debunked numerous social media reports of abduction attempts by human traffickers at Target, Hobby Lobby and other department stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and other states.

This story was originally published November 20, 2017 at 12:28 PM with the headline "That sticker on your car is not signaling sex traffickers to target you, police say."