PARIS, Nov 17 (Reuters) - France's child protection

agency chief Sarah El Hairy has asked the regulator to

investigate second-hand clothes marketplace Vinted for failing

to prevent minors accessing adult content, in another move

against e-commerce giants in the country.

El Hairy asked TV and Internet regulator Arcom to probe

Vinted after finding some classified ads on the platform

allegedly redirected all users, even underage ones, to websites

with pornographic content, she said in an interview on French TV

channel France 3 on Sunday.

"Where there are children or teenagers, there are predators,

and what they did this time is to use sales of ordinary objects

to direct (users) towards pornographic sites," she said.

Vinted and Arcom did not immediately respond to emails

seeking comment.

France is cracking down broadly on large foreign e-commerce

leaders in an attempt to protect local retailers.

Many of these feel threatened by what they see as unfair

competition from cheaper and better-marketed products on their

own turf by large platforms from China such as AliExpress

, Temu or Shein, or from the U.S. such as eBay ( EBAY )

or Amazon ( AMZN ).

A consumer watchdog opened investigations against five such

platforms for violating rules on selling illicit products online

a few days after Shein opened its first physical store in Paris.

The French crackdown echoes similar EU initiatives such as the

Thursday decision to bring forward by one year customs duties on

low-value parcels arriving in the bloc in an effort to slow down

the flow of goods from China.