Europe is becoming a global hub for posting images and videos of child sexual abuse online, a report has said.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said in its annual report that 60 percent of the world’s abusive content is now found in Europe, up from 19 percent previously.
The IWF has said that the Netherlands is at the top of the list of European countries in terms of uploading illegal content.
The report said that due to advanced monitoring and reporting systems by Internet service providers in North American countries, this task has now shifted to Europe rather than there.
IWF chief Susie Hargreaves said: “The situation is now reversed compared to previous years.” Compared to North America, Europe has now become the largest source and reservoir of child sexual exploitation.
It should be noted that the IWF is a British organization that finds and removes inappropriate content from the internet in the UK.
According to IWF statistics, in 2015, 57 percent of the pages on the Internet containing inappropriate content came from North America. In 2016, this dropped to 37 percent, and most of the pages are now coming from Europe.
The IWF said 34,212 pages posted on the Internet from Europe were found to contain false content. European countries include Russia and Turkey.
Susie Hargreaves said the move meant the US industry was working hard to tackle the problem and had forced criminals to look elsewhere to upload and share their content.
John Sheehan, vice president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in America (NCMEC), said that the work of American ISPs to identify and then remove such content “is a step in that direction.” Values are signs.’
He said US law requires ISPs to report such content to authorities when they see it.
He said that no company in Europe actively does this, which is why the report is seeing this change.
Arda Jerkens, a member of parliament in the Netherlands who oversees the campaign against abusive content on the Internet, said she had seen an increase in ISPs reporting such content over the years.
He also said that there had been no change in European policy in the last 12 months that would have caused this.
A spokeswoman for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the UK said effective action was needed to curb the rise in demand for child sexual exploitation material and to identify images and videos of child sexual exploitation. What are the ways to prevent it from being seen?