IWF analyst 'Lucy' spoke to the BBC about her work tracking down and fighting against online child sexual abuse.
Isobel has been working throughout lockdown. With her colleagues in the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) analyst room in Cambridge she has been responding to a rising number of tipoffs from the public that child abuse images are circulating online. The work is gruelling.
Internet Watch Foundation says amount of material showing most extreme form of sexual abuse has doubled since 2020
A leading child protection organisation has warned that abuse of AI technology threatens to "overwhelm" the internet.
People trying to view sexual images of children online will trigger a first-of-its-kind chatbot, which has launched to help potential offenders stop their behaviour.
IWF’s 2024 analysis shows how top-level domains are misused to host child sexual abuse imagery, revealing key trends and safety concerns.
Peers warn lack of clarity on IWF role could create ‘vacuum which allows hateful material to proliferate’
On 3 April, essential child protection systems used by technology companies to detect and remove online child sexual abuse material will become illegal to operate in the EU unless the European Parliament votes to extend the current legal framework. A temporary law allowing voluntary detection is expiring, and political deadlock has stalled a permanent solution. This will create a dangerous legal vacuum that perpetrators are aware of and poised to exploit. Proven tools like hash‑matching - which do not compromise privacy - would be forced offline, enabling millions of known abusive images to resurface. Research shows these systems deter offenders and make access harder; disabling them will reverse this progress. MEPs have one final chance to act by voting for an amendment that preserves protections for children across Europe.
People in Senegal will now be able to report child sexual abuse if they stumble across it online.
New Head of Hotline role identified as ‘pivotal’ in the Internet Watch Foundation's mission to tackle child sexual abuse material online among growing threats such as AI generated imagery.