Internet Watch Foundation

The IWF was established in 1996 by the internet industry to provide the UK internet Hotline for the public and IT professionals to report criminal online content in a secure and confidential way. The Hotline service can be used anonymously to report content within our remit. We work in partnership with the online industry, law enforcement, government, and international partners to minimise the availability of this content, specifically, child sexual abuse images hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene adult content and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.

 

We are an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the wider online industry, including internet service providers, mobile operators and manufacturers, content service providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations, and the financial sector.

 

We work with UK government to influence initiatives developed to combat online abuse and this dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe to promote greater awareness of global issues, trends and responsibilities. We work internationally with INHOPE Hotlines and other relevant organisations to encourage united global responses to the problem and wider adoption of good practice in combating child sexual abuse images on the internet.

 

We help internet service providers and hosting companies to combat the abuse of their networks through our ‘notice and take-down’ service which alerts them to content within our remit so they can remove it from their networks and we provide unique data to law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad to assist investigations into the distributers. As a result of this approach the content we deal with has been virtually eradicated from UK networks and the volume of child sexual abuse content worldwide is decreasing. As sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad, we facilitate the industry-led initiative to protect users from inadvertent exposure to this content by blocking access to it through our provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse web pages.

 

We strive to create continued awareness of the role and purpose of the IWF and aim to foster trust and reassurance in the internet for current and future users. Our self-regulatory partnership approach is widely recognised as a model of good practice in combating the abuse of technology for the dissemination of criminal content.

 

Please note that 'child pornography', 'child porn' and 'kiddie porn' are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images.

 

IWF is an incorporated charity, limited by guarantee. Charity No. 1112398.