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Internet Watch Foundation: success in UK, dangers abroad


The Internet Watch Foundation yesterday reported its campaign against illegal material on the internet is succeeding in Britain, but that overseas criminals are getting more sophisticated, with an increasing use of cryptography to hide the trade in child pornography.

The comments were contained in its Annual Review for 2002 which revealed that the IWF's targeting of newsgroups has resulted in 470,000 illegal images per year per ISP no longer being available. ISPs had acted on IWF requests to cease hosting certain newsgroups that frequently carried illegal images, or have names that would indicate illegal activity.

The group claims that UK servers host less than 3% of all the potentially illegal material referred to the foundation.

Referrals to the group take place through a hotline. The number of complaints was up by 64%, amounting to 21,341 reports in total. Of these, 50% were found to be potentially illegal, and information was passed to the relevant enforcement agencies and service providers.

Last year, this resulted in 35 arrests, including the arrest of one person who was holding around 30,000 illegal images.

However, the IWF noted huge increases in potentially illegal sites hosted abroad, particularly in Russia, which has seen an increase this year from 286 to 706 such sites.

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