Published: Tue 12 Feb 2019
I was invited to speak at the G2 Risk Summit, in London, this month. G2, a proud Member of the IWF, works with acquirers to ensure the payments they’re processing are kept clear of fraud, illegal goods and services, counterfeit, transaction laundering and other violations. This includes the commercial aspect of child sexual abuse material.
It was a great honour to be able to speak at the event and shows how seriously G2 take this issue and how keen they were to highlight this. Quite rightly, the fines for processing a payment for child sexual abuse are tremendously high, so as well as learning about the background of the IWF, what our analysts see every day and the various statistics we have from our annual report, the financial risk to them in their businesses was also highlighted.
The payment industry has taken certain steps to counter the traditional sale of child sexual abuse imagery. However, it remains a profitable source of income for criminal groups. On top of this, these groups have adapted the ways they sell this horrific content. As our analysts proactively search the internet, they can stay ahead of any emerging trend. As a result, we can develop and refine the tools and services we make available to our Members from the payment sector to disrupt this.
It was important that I was able to share this message to the industry, so they are aware of the challenges faced. It is only by working together that we will be able to rid the internet of commercial child sexual abuse material.
We would not expect children to protect themselves from sexual abuse in schools, clubs or youth organisations so why would we adopt such an approach online?
Public debate around online child sexual abuse material detection is dominated by myths, misunderstandings, and hypotheticals. The truth is that detection technology is built on established safety and security tools that have been embedded across the digital ecosystem for decades.
