An IWF & Omaze Collaboration

We exist to stop child sexual abuse online

Launched in 1996, the UK’s not-for-profit Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a global organisation providing high quality data and technical services to prevent the upload, storage, distribution and trade of child sexual abuse imagery around the world. Headquartered in the UK and working internationally, we provide Europe’s largest hotline for combating online child sexual abuse images and videos. 

Our highly trained and carefully looked after human analysts have investigated – with ‘eyes on’ – more than 1.6 million reports from the public, police, tech companies, and through their own proactive searching in the past five years alone.  

We provide the most accurate trends and data on this issue, nationally and globally, informing threat assessments produced by law enforcement agencies and other global bodies. We proactively seek solutions to be one step ahead of the preparator. This is a local, national and global social and digital emergency. We need Omaze's support to work together to stop online child sexual abuse!  

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Latest Updates

IWF Annual Report 2023 launch

Our Annual Report 2023 provides the latest trends and data on the distribution of child sexual abuse images and videos on the internet. It also showcases the amazing work of our Hotline and wider teams. For more information and to watch our launch video please visit here.

 

IWF in the news

IWF worked with ITV News on an exclusive to raise awareness of the tactics of offenders after our analysts discovered a "handbook" to guide abusers looking to exploit children online.

Working together to stop child sexual abuse online

We wish to collaborate with Omaze to see a world where no child is ever sexually abused and then forced to face the very real possibility that a record of their terrible abuse will be shared online. 

 

Emma Hardy, IWF Director of Communication, introduces IWF to Omaze

Shocking Statistics

In 2023, we assessed a webpage every 80 seconds. Every 114 seconds, that webpage showed a child being sexually abused.

 

We discovered more Category A child sexual abuse material online than ever before. This material contains the most severe kinds of sexual abuse, more than doubling since 2020. Read more in our 2023 Annual Report. 

 

392,665 Number of reports assessed by IWF in 2023
2,255,390 Total hashes of criminal images & videos by the end of 2023
275652 Reports confirmed to show child sexual abuse in 2023
92%
of content removed contained "self-generated" child sexual abuse material

Move the carousel to see the impact we can make together

  • £500,000

    Could support mandatory yearly counselling and psychological assessments for our incredibly resilient analysts, who do an extraordinary job. They’re highly trained to identify criminal imagery, but they’re also exposed to other content they don’t expect to see, this will assist our gold-standard welfare system.

  • £1 million

    Young people are increasingly being groomed by online predators to create sexually explicit images and videos. This money could fund a one-off, life changing preventative communications campaign to keep children safe online by working with schools and parents/carers across the country.

  • £1.2 million

    Could annually back our in-house software developers to create and develop cutting-edge (tech-for-good) tools to accurately grade and eliminate child sexual abuse images while generating unique digital fingerprints, to give our expert human analysts a technological advantage and to help us stay ahead of the criminals who ruthlessly abuse children.

  • £1.5 million

    Could annually sustain our ever-growing UK Hotline, which is the core function of the IWF, in its crucial role in removing harmful content. Each report we process is manually assessed by our highly trained analysts and we provide trusted accurate datasets to partners worldwide, to tackle the distribution of child sexual abuse material ensuring a safer internet for children.

  • £2 million

    Could establish a dedicated and transformational IWF training centre to share expertise with NGOs and law enforcement, fostering impactful collaborations in combating online child exploitation.

 

Impact

Every day young people are contacted, online, by adults who try to manipulate or groom and sexually exploit them.

Young Girl Sad Height Chart

Let us talk you through Olivia's story…


In 2013 – a decade ago – Olivia was rescued from her abuser. She was eight. Today she is 18, and an adult. But images and videos of her abuse are still shared and traded online.  

Our analysts, who dedicate their time to finding and removing this imagery, have seen her grow up in pictures. They know her at three. They know her at four, five, six, seven and eight.  

They know what she was made to do. In Olivia’s case, they also know that she was rescued. Not all abused children are that fortunate. They don’t know if Olivia is aware that her images are still being watched online. It’s our job to help her now.    

We can’t reach into the screens and stop the abuse, stop the viral marketing, stop people targeting children. But with a mission to eliminate all online child sexual abuse imagery, we aim to help all the Olivias out there into adulthood, regardless of whether they’re truly aware of us or not.  

 

 

  • In 3 out of 5 images, Olivia was raped or sexually tortured. 

  • She was rescued by police aged 8. 

  • There were 347 times in a 3-month period where her imagery appeared. 

  • This is 5 times a day on average. 

  • Olivia is one child; there are thousands like her.

 

 

In 2021 we launched our Home Truths campaign which was a huge success. It really does speak for itself. It featured a scene which our analysts see day in day out. 

IWF Home Truths Campaign Video