URL List

Protect your customers, staff & platform from websites showing the graphic sexual abuse of children with our URL List.

It’s a frightening reality that the development of the internet has made it easier for heartless perpetrators to abuse children. They cloak themselves in the anonymity of the web. They groom youngsters, manipulating innocent minds. They sexually abuse children, from babies to teenagers, then share a recording of the torture online.

We are fighting back. Our URL List is a vital tool in this battle. The tech community that uses our List to protect customers, staff and services trust our assessments, experience and knowledge. They’re partners in our mission to defend children online.

Our dynamic URL List provides a comprehensive list of webpages where we’ve confirmed images and videos of child sexual abuse. Since each URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a unique webpage, image link, or website address, we can be precise about the exact location of the criminal imagery to ensure we never over-block a legitimate website.

All IWF Members can use this List, under licence so that they can block access to live criminal webpages and websites. While access to the images and videos is blocked, we work to have the actual picture or video removed from the internet.

Our expert team update the list twice a day, adding new URLs as our analysts find them and removing URLs that no longer contain the criminal content. URLs are only added to the list if the hosted content has been assessed as criminal under UK law by our world-class analysts. Only if an entire website is dedicated to confirmed child sexual abuse will we block at domain level.

The tech community using our List is doing the right thing. Sadly, we know there are huge numbers of criminal images of children being sexually abused on the open internet. We count horrific pictures in the hundreds of thousands.

Figures are shocking, but they don’t tell the whole story. Each image is a real child. Sometimes their torture has been requested by a perpetrator. Sometimes victims have endured the agony of abuse for years. Even after the physical torment has ended, survivors can be haunted by the knowledge that a record of their suffering is being viewed and downloaded. It’s a living hell.

Accidentally stumbling on one of these terrible images online can be traumatic for an ordinary internet user or tech community worker. The emotional and legal dangers of seeing a criminal photograph of a child are far-reaching.

That’s why our URL is proving a vital tool in the battle to defend both survivors of abuse, children and all internet users online.

Why use the IWF URL List?

Our URL List is dynamic. It’s updated twice a day, adding new confirmed criminal URLs as soon as our analysts find them. Once the criminal imagery has been removed, the URL is removed from the List which prevents the over-blocking of legitimate sites.
Our analysts manually assess every URL on the List. Human eyes check and double-check each and every image or video. We are 100% confident in our assessments.
We are one of the only organisations in the world actively searching for online criminal URLs.
Our URL List helps protect customers and staff from accidentally viewing criminal imagery of children. This helps prevent the emotional legacy of seeing pictures of abuse.

URL List policy

The URL List in 2024

142,789 Total number of unique URLs included on the List in 2024

1,129 Average number of URLs added to the List each day

6722 Number of URLs per day on the list

How do IWF Members use our URL List?

To block access to webpages and websites hosting criminal imagery at a network level.
To detect and block the sharing of links to pages and sites known to be hosting images and videos of child sexual abuse.
To prevent indexing by search engines. Search providers can use our List to delist from indexes, so that they don’t show up in search results.

Companies that could help fight online child sexual abuse by using our List include:

Internet service providers (ISPs)
Filtering service providers
Search providers
Internet security providers
Hosting service providers
Registrars
Other organisations involved in the internet, communications or network security.

When a technology company deploys the URL List, it prevents people from stumbling across known – and available – images or videos of children being sexually abused. In tandem, we recommend that companies show a “splash page” or information page if someone tries to access a webpage which is on our List. This tells people why they can’t access the webpage and where they can go for help should they be worried about their online behaviour.

Since 2015, splash pages have resulted in 26,000 new users visiting the Stop It Now! support website.

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