People at higher risk of stumbling across child sexual abuse material online, warn expert analysts at the IWF
People are at increased risk of accidentally stumbling across online child sexual abuse material as the team at the Internet Watch Foundation, a partner in the UK Safer Internet Centre, has discovered a disturbing new trend, where criminals are profiting from spamming links to criminal material on social media platforms.
The public is advised not to click on any suspicious URLs, as criminals are spamming links to the sites for people in the UK to unknowingly click on them. These are called “invite child abuse pyramid (iCAP)” sites and since the trend was first identified by IWF expert analysts in July this year, the team has already assessed over 4,774 reports and worked to remove 168 websites found to be hosting criminal child sexual abuse imagery. When the content is found, the IWF team notifies the companies whose services have been abused to host this material, and together work to have the content removed.