Internet Watch Foundation Unveils an Increase in Online Child Abuse Cases

In an interview, Miss Zoe Colpaert, the International Development Officer of the Internet Watch Foundation has revealed the worrying increase in online child abuse cases. Colpaert further stated that each year online child abuse cases have had a significant increase and that the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic this year has even been worse.

“Every year the number of reports grows, from 2019 we’ve got an increase of 10%, in 2019 alone we had about 260,126 reports which translates to 40%. Also from January to July 2020, we had 50% more reports especially during the covid-19 lockdown,” indicated Miss Colpaert. It is with such an increase in online child abuse cases that Thomas Dyson, the Foundation’s Marketing Manager, urged the public to report to their outfit with a link of the abusive online content.

“Members of the public can report to us anonymously, all they have to do is to copy and paste the URL of what they have seen or suspect to be online child sexual abuse. They will have to paste it to our website, our analyst will assess the content and if it proves to be criminal in nature and have scenes of children being sexually abused, we will work with our partners to have that content removed immediately,” directed Mr. Dyson.

Dyson further encouraged the public not to hesitate to report increased cases of online child abuse since data received by the Internet Watch Foundation is safe and secure from interference by any external force. “In the last 25 years or so we haven’t had issues with data been lost or stolen, we work with a tech company because security is of importance to us, so the data we gather is extremely safe,” stated the Marketing Manager.