Hailed by one parent as a ‘game-changer’, the tool allows anyone under 18 in the UK to anonymously report sexual images and videos of themselves on the internet.
Child protection analysts have seen a significant rise in reports from children accessing the world-leading Report Remove service run by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the NSPCC’s Childline service.
Hailed by one parent as a ‘game-changer’, the tool allows anyone under 18 in the UK to anonymously report sexual images and videos of themselves on the internet.
The surge in use also comes at a time when the ‘ruthless’ sexual extortion of children shows no sign of abating.
The new data from IWF show that 1,142 reports were submitted to Report Remove and assessed by analysts in 2024, a 44% increase on the year before.
Of these, the IWF – the UK’s hotline dedicated to finding and removing child sexual abuse imagery online – actioned 642 reports (56%) that contained criminal child sexual abuse content. This is also a rise when compared with 508 reports from 2023 (26%).
Reports ‘actioned’ by the IWF are confirmed as containing images and/or videos of child sexual abuse according to UK law. Children can report both webpages that contain their sexual image or the individual images and videos themselves via the Report Remove service. IWF analysts can then take steps to block and take down any criminal webpages and imagery.