Geographical hosting: URLs

 

Where are webpages being hosted?

You can find out about the UK hosting situation here.

When we’ve assessed that an image or video fails UK law, our aim is to get it removed from the internet as fast as possible. To do this, we perform a trace on the URL to identify the location of the physical server that the content is hosted on. This tells us which partners in which country we need to work with. When the content is removed from the physical server – its source – then we can be sure that the image has been removed from any sites – like websites, forums, or image hosts – that could be linking to it.

Total reports by continent

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Note: Unknown location refers to reports from children through either Report Remove or Meri Trustline where images/videos have been directly reported to IWF and are therefore not online and cannot be traced to a location. 

*The .onion domains identified cannot be attributed to any specific hosting country and are provided for transparency.

 

 

Number of reports (URLs) by country (Top ten)

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Country

Number of Reports

% of Total Number of Reports

% in 2022

% point change

Netherlands

91,572

33%

32%

+1%

United States

41,502

15%

15%

+0%

Hong Kong

25,576

9%

5%

+4%

Switzerland

22,569

8%

0%

+8%

Bulgaria

17,536

6%

4%

+2%

Germany

12,984

5%

2%

+3%

South Africa

11,796

4%

0%

+4%

Slovak Republic

11,558

4%

12%

-8%

Singapore

6,892

3%

1%

+2%

Russian Federation

5,726

2%

5%

-3%

Where the change is less than 1% we have added +/- to reflect the movement of an increase or decrease on previous years figures.

View the full list of the number of reports (URLs) by country, here.

Note: Unknown location refers to reports from children through either Report Remove or Meri Trustline where images/videos have been directly reported to IWF and are therefore not online and cannot be traced to a location.

In 2023 we saw no significant change in the proportion of child sexual abuse URLs being hosted in the Netherlands, up slightly from 32% of the 2022 total, to 33% of the 2023 total (82,605 URLs to 91,572 respectively). The proportion of child sexual abuse URLs hosted in the US stayed the same at 15% of the 2022 and 2023 totals (37,285 URLs in 2022 and 41,502 URLs in 2023).

We saw an increase, however, in child sexual abuse URLs hosted in Switzerland; this rose from 637 reports (which accounted for 1% of hosting in 2022) to 22,569 reports, which constitutes an 8% share of all hosting in 2023. This was chiefly owing to just two different sites, both of which were hosting thousands of child sexual abuse images. This shows the impact that one or two bad-actor hosters can have on the distribution of child sexual abuse material traced to particular country.

Some criminal child sexual abuse sites, especially those created specifically to share imagery for commercial gain, are dynamic and deliberately move their hosting from country to country to avoid removal. We continue to track these sites when they change location and seek to take them offline wherever they go.

 

Hosting across EU Member States

Over half 140,911 (51%) of child sexual abuse reports were traced to hosting services in EU Member states.

Member States

Number of Reports

% of Total Number of Reports

% in 2022

% point change
Netherlands 91,572 33% 32% +1%
Bulgaria 17,536 6% 4% +2%
Germany 12,984 5% 2% +3%
Slovak Republic 11,558 4% 12% -8%
France 2947 1% 3% -2%
Sweden 1,660 1% 0% +0%
Romania 852 0% 2% -2%
Luxembourg 626 0% 0% -0%
Lithuania 534 0% 0% +0%
Estonia 171 0% 0% +0%
Czech Republic 105 0% 0% +0%
Finland 101 0% 0% -0%
Poland 94 0% 0% -0%
Latvia 68 0% 1% -1%
Austria 63 0% 0% +0%
Portugal 13 0% 0% -0%
Hungary 8 0% 0% -0%
Italy 7 0% 0% +0%
Spain 5 0% 0% -0%
Belgium 4 0% - -
Denmark 2 0% 0% +0%
Cyprus 1 0% - -

EU Member States Total

140,911

51%

-

-

Where the change is less than 1% we have added +/- to reflect the movement of an increase or decrease on previous years figures.

 

What can we do about removing this content?

We are committed to playing our part globally in the removal of content.

We constantly innovate to achieve this. We’ve set up 53 Reporting Portals around the world as part of our work in partnership with the Global Fund to End Violence Against Children. This has enabled us to develop vital links with other NGOs, governments and police services globally to remove this content.

In the EU we work closely with Europol and Interpol and the Lanzarote Committee of the Council of Europe. Europol have produced a number of threat assessments which have referenced many similar trends we have identified including a rise in self-generated content.

As a key organisation within the INHOPE network (International Association of Internet Hotlines), we work closely with all other INHOPE hotlines around the world to ensure that we alert our partners when we find child sexual abuse content hosted in their country. IWF Reporting Portals are included under the INHOPE umbrella.

Additionally, we “chase up” our partners if this criminal imagery is not removed quickly.

View trends and data for the UK.