The number of websites on which the most serious form of child abuse material was found has doubled in two years. That writes the British Internet Watch Foundation. Of the 255,571 verified websites reported in 2022, 51,369 showed the most violent forms of abuse.
This so-called ‘category A’ includes images with ‘penetrative sexual activity, sexual activity with animals or sadism’, writes the Internet Watch Foundation in its annual report. In 2020, there were still 25,050 reports of this form of child abuse material. In 2021 45,448. The total number of reports from websites showing verified child abuse material is 255,571. That is a growth of 66.6 percent compared to 2020, when there were 153,383 confirmed reports. In 2021 there were 252,194.
Most reported child abuse was mainly on Dutch servers. This has been the case for years, but the amount seems to be decreasing. In 2020 71 percent of URLs were still hosted from the Netherlands, in 2021 that was 41 percent and 32 percent last year. Overall, European countries hosted about 59 percent of reported child abuse material. Later this year, a European bill will be voted on that requires tech companies to scan internet traffic for child abuse. However, there is much criticism of that law of privacy organizations, because they are said to be at odds with the privacy law.
