Last Thursday saw the arrival of the fourth national Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) awareness day. To mark the day, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) re-launched its website so that the public can easily report suspicious content on the web.
The IWF is a self-regulatory organisation that works with internet service providers government departments, charities and the police to tackle images of child sexual abuse, criminally obscene adult content or incitement to racial hatred.
The site — www.iwf.org.uk — gets around 400,000 visits a year and has dealt with over 35,000 reports this year. As a result of the IWF’s work, less than 1% of online child sexual abuse content has apparently been hosted in the UK since 2003, down from 18% in 1997.
IWF Hotline
The IWF also operates a UK Hotline where you can report content anonymously.
Eve Salomon, IWF Chair, said:
It is crucial that everyone knows they can report child sexual abuse images to us and have confidence that we will work to get them removed and investigated, wherever they originate in the world… Fighting child sexual abuse is something that unites us all and a report to the IWF could rescue a child from suffering.
The IWF is also working with industry members to improve self-regulation. There are now over 70 internet service providers that receive a list of sites to block so that their customers don’t stumble onto obscene images of children. If you’d like to find out if your ISP has signed up to protect you, check the IWF URL List.
Child Safety Online
As part of our work as a social media moderation company, Tempero takes the issue of child safety online very seriously. Back in July, we put together a Child Safety Guide in collaboration with Econsultancy.
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