Charity steps up removal of child sex abuse images

The UK-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said it assisted in the removal of 31,266 pages last year, compared with 13,182 in 2013.

It said in many cases, each address contained more than one photo or video.

The figures do not necessarily indicate that illegal activity is increasing.

Instead, they may simply reflect that the charity recently began taking a proactive approach, seeking out child abuse imagery rather than just acting on others' reports.

It was able to do this after the UK's four biggest internet service providers committed an extra £1m over four years to fund its efforts.

If the material is hosted overseas, the organisation notifies local authorities and then repeatedly chases up complaints until the material is removed.

"Our ability to actively seek out child sexual abuse imagery created a significant step-change in the effectiveness of the IWF," said chief executive Susie Hargreaves.

"We have a mission to protect victims of sexual abuse from having their images repeatedly viewed. The more content we can identify and work with others to get removed, the bigger the benefit to those victims."

The body's annual report discloses that of the discovered material:

Fewer than 0.3% of the web pages detected were hosted in the UK

56% were hosted in North America

41% were hosted in Europe, including Russia

The IWF said image-hosting platforms that create a specific web address link when a file is uploaded were the most common type of misused service it had encountered, accounting for about 63% of the offending pages detected.

Such systems typically create what appears to be a random string of numbers and digits as the address.

One independent expert, who advises Europol on such crimes, said this may have contributed to their appeal.

"The paedophiles are looking for ways to make it more difficult for law enforcement to detect them sharing child abuse imagery," said Alan Woodward.

"There is a lot of research being done on automatically detecting the images themselves and what keywords to look for in related text."

"But if the paedophiles are sharing what is effectively a signpost, written in code that is in no way related to the nature of material linked to online, then there is much less chance of identifying those sharing such extreme material, or where it is located in order that it can be removed."

They're a good place to put your holidays snaps, or pictures of the office party, school football team or even your favourite pets. The web has any number of photo-sharing, or "image hosting" sites. They are legal, mostly free and easy to use. Register, log on, upload and you have your own private collection of images. Only people you select can view them and only once you've sent them a link. No one else will know what is in your collection.

The link is just a line of code that reveals nothing. And that is where the problem lies. Paedophiles are becoming increasingly aware that known images of abuse can be tracked and traced if shared conventionally: each image has a unique hash value that can trigger red flags for both email providers and law enforcement. A line of code or URL directing a user to a private collection on an "image hosting" site is anonymous and triggers no alerts.

The IWF figures seem to back up the theory that paedophiles are increasingly turning to these sites. In 2013 analysts found 5,594 such URLs - a figure that had risen to 19,710 by the following year. Indeed, that accounts for almost two thirds of all links to obscene material identified by the IWF. Criminals are in effect hiding in plain view on entirely legitimate websites.

But there is more. The IWF says it contacts any company unwittingly hosting such URLS and requests that they take them down. In the UK most respond within hours, as do many in North America - but not all. There seems to be a growing mood of frustration within the IWF that some companies in the US and Canada can take days, weeks or even months to remove obscene content. Those delays mean that an image of a victim of abuse - and what is effectively a crime scene - will remain accessible to anyone with access to that URL long after it should have been removed.

(BBC)