We work to stop the repeated victimisation of people abused in childhood, and make the internet a safer place, by identifying & removing global online child sexual abuse imagery.

Working to stop child sexual abuse online

Pro­tect­ing chil­dren is at the heart of every­thing we do. For over 25 years, since the ear­ly days of the inter­net, our job has been to help child vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse by hunt­ing down and remov­ing any online record of the abuse.

It’s a tough job. Our image ana­lysts are amongst the best in the world. The chil­dren in the pic­tures are real. Their abuse and suf­fer­ing is very real. Our experts nev­er for­get that.

The crim­i­nals who sex­u­al­ly abuse chil­dren, then record their suf­fer­ing and share the hor­ror online are ruth­less. Some­times they cre­ate images with audi­ences in mind. Vic­tims range from babies to young teens. Abusers are often expe­ri­enced at online groom­ing, skilled at manip­u­lat­ing young minds. Some­times vic­tims don’t even realise they are being abused until it’s too late.

Sad­ly, the inter­net makes it eas­i­er to share these images. We use advanced tech­nol­o­gy and human exper­tise to help young vic­tims. If we can remove the record of suf­fer­ing online and stop those images cir­cu­lat­ing, then we can stop the abuse being per­pet­u­at­ed. This makes the inter­net a safer place for all chil­dren and adults.

How we do this

• Tech-for-good. We build cut­ting-edge tech tools designed to make it eas­i­er to iden­ti­fy and remove online images and videos of child sex­u­al abuse. In short, tech to pro­tect kids.
• Our team of human ana­lysts. Tech com­pa­nies and law enforce­ment world­wide trust the assess­ments, expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of our extra­or­di­nary team of people.
• Work­ing togeth­er. With inter­na­tion­al part­ners in gov­ern­ment, law enforce­ment, report­ing hot­lines, char­i­ties and the tech com­mu­ni­ty we work to stop ille­gal images of chil­dren being cir­cu­lat­ed again and again. We share vital infor­ma­tion that could lead to the res­cue of a child from ter­ri­ble abuse.
• IWF Hot­line. This gives peo­ple a safe and anony­mous place to report sus­pect­ed online images and videos show­ing the sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren. When we start­ed in 1996, 18 per cent of child sex­u­al abuse imagery online was host­ed in the UK. Today, thanks to our Hot­line, it’s less than one per cent. We’re proud of that.