Internet rivals Google, Facebook and Twitter unite in child porn crackdown

4 months ago

The big three internet giants – Google, Facebook and Twitter – are working together with a UK charity to find and remove millions of online images of child sexual abuse.

Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), an anti-abuse organisation, is sharing lists of images of abuse with web companies to protect their customers and help victims.

Sharing the lists – in which images are identified by a hash, or unique digital fingerprint – will allow victims’ images to be identified and removed more quickly from the internet, preventing them from being repeatedly shared.

What will it do?

- Prevent people from uploading images in the first instance

- Protect people from accidentally stumbling on the images

How does it work?

Creating a hash of a single image allows it to be “plucked” from the internet, akin to finding a needle in a haystack, the IWF said.

Hashes will be created from images that IWF analysts have assessed, regardless of whether they were sourced from a public report, a report from the online industry, an image actively found by the charity’s analysts, or an image from the Home Office’s new Child Abuse Image Database.

Hash lists of images will be shared with internet companies that provide services such as the uploading, storage or search of images, filtering or hosting services and social media and chat services, as well as those working in connectivity and data centres.

Establishment of the “hash list” is an escalation of the efforts to make the internet a hostile place to view, download and trade images of children being sexually abused, the IWF believes.

What are people saying?

The IWF:

Chief executive Susie Hargreaves said: “The IWF Hash List could be a game-changer and really steps up the fight against child sexual abuse images online.

“This is something we have worked on with our members since the Prime Ministers’ #WePROTECT summit last December. We’ll soon be able to offer the hash list to all IWF members, who are based around the world.

“It means victims’ images can be identified and removed more quickly, and we can prevent known child sexual abuse images from being uploaded to the internet in the first place.”

The NSPCC:

“This latest development will help tighten the grip on the source of child abuse images but there is still a way to go before we can strangle the life out of this sordid trade.

“However we mustn’t forget the victims who may need protection from further abuse. Greater efforts have to be made to arrest those responsible for these abhorrent crimes. Until we have a unified approach to this problem it will continue to plague our communities.”