IWF Releases 2011 Annual Report – Shocking Statistics
Trends and Statistics:
- Criminals intent on distributing images of children being sexually abused are finding new ways of exploiting legitimate online technologies, including disguising websites to appear as if they host only legal content. Predetermined digital paths exist to push users to the inappropriate content. This poses a challenges to web filtering solutions providers because when the website is accessed directly, only legal content appears.
- Child sexual abuse content hosted outside of the UK is more likely to feature younger children, and more likely to show sexual activity between adults and children, rape and sexual torture.
- 74% of the child victims appeared to be 10 years old or under.
- 64% of all the child sexual abuse URLs depicted sexual activity between adults and children including the rape and sexual torture of the children.
- 65% of the victims were girls.
- The top five types of websites exploited to host child sexual abuse content were image hosts at 45%, followed by banner sites, social networking sites, generic websites and file hosts.
IWF Successes:
- 90% of all reports made to the IWF Hotline were believed to contain child sexual abuse material and 35% were confirmed as such by IWF analysts – slightly up on 2010 at 89% and 34% respectively.
- Around half of this content is removed in 10 days. In 2008 it typically stayed available for more than one month.
- A total of 12,966 URLs contained child sexual abuse content hosted on 1,595 domains in 2011, significantly down from the 2006 figure of 3,077 domains.
- Because of the IWF’s efforts, three children who were being sexually abused were rescued during 2011 as a result of sharing intelligence with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre.
Learn more about the IWF and view the full 2011 Annual and Charity Report. zvelo is a proud member of the IWF.
