UK parents warned over posting images of children amid AI sexual abuse fears
National Crime Agency and safety watchdog issue guidance amid rise in explicit material online.
3 July 2026
IWF In The News
Digital fingerprints of a million child abuse images made
Published: Mon 6 Jun 2022
Written by: BBC News
Digital fingerprints of a million images of child sexual abuse have been created, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has said.
The UK charity, which is responsible for finding and removing such material online, said the fingerprints, known as hashes, would help companies and police find copies of the images.
It is hoped that by doing this, the reuse of the images can be prevented.
The images are from the government's Child Abuse Image Database.
The database contains some of the most extreme content that appears online - what is known as category A and B material.
The hashes are an identifying code produced by an algorithm and act as a fingerprint for each image or video.
Read more on BBC News.
