Bloxx to join Internet Watch Foundation

By Alan Harten

Bloxx, the web filtering specialist, today announced that it has become a member of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), joining around 80 members from a diverse range of organisations in their battle against illegal online content.

Eighteen months ago IWF released statistics regarding their activities, that revealed that they receive around 1,000 reports each month, which amounts to a shocking 30,000 websites that contain illegal child abuse content.

When they began operations 10 years ago, they received 615 reports for the first year.

Instead of decreasing with new vigilance and legal powers across the world, this actually increased to 27,000 reports in their tenth year.

One the plus side, in year one 18% of reported sites were hosted in the UK, by year 10 that had dropped to 0.2%.

Nearly 80% of the images feature young girls.

Of all classes of illegal site content 85% is child abuse, 10% are ‘criminally obscene websites’ and 5% relate to racial hatred sites.

Strangely the figures show that only around a third of child abuse websites reported are actually deemed to be illegal by IWF.

Hosting stats show the sites are most commonly hosted in America (51%) followed by 20% in Russia, 7% in Spain and the UK hosts 1.6% of these illegal sites.

With its expert knowledge of up-to-date web filtering technologies, Bloxx hopes to contribute to the remarkable success of the IWF in tackling online illegal content; specifically child sexual abuse images hosted worldwide and criminally obscene and racial hatred content hosted in the UK.

Through working closely with the online sector, the government and general public, the IWF aims to foster trust and confidence in the Internet among current and future users; assist service providers in combating the abuse of their systems and to assist law enforcement in the fight against online illegal content.

The IWF operates a UK ‘Hotline’, enabling the public and IT professionals to report any instances of potentially illegal content on the internet in order to remove it, prevent access to it and disrupt the activities of those operating such websites.

“We are delighted to welcome Bloxx as a member of the IWF. The dedicated support of our members has ensured our continuing success in minimising the availability of potentially illegal content on the Internet and, indeed, child sexual abuse images have been virtually eradicated from being hosted on UK networks,” comments IWF CEO, Peter Robbins OBE, QPM.

“It is important for us to engage with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure we are operating in effective and inclusive partnership and to facilitate the sharing of self-regulatory good practice, technological developments and wider expertise. We look forward to Bloxx’s contribution to this process.”

“The Web is a fantastic resource that should be safe for all, but unfortunately there’s a dark underside where the Internet is used to host and distribute potentially illegal content,” adds Bloxx Chief Executive Officer Eamonn Doyle.

“The IWF has done an outstanding job in raising the profile of these issues and working proactively with the Government and industry to address the challenges, so we are delighted to add our support to these efforts. We look forward to making a significant contribution to the ongoing success of the IWF.”

About the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)
The IWF is the only recognised organisation in the UK operating an internet ‘Hotline’ for the public and IT professionals to report their inadvertent exposure to potentially illegal content online.

Their aim is to minimise the availability of potentially illegal internet content, specifically, including child sexual abuse images hosted anywhere in the world; criminally obscene content hosted in the UK and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.

The IWF works in partnership with UK Government departments such as the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to influence initiatives and programmes developed to combat online abuse.

This dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe, to ensure greater awareness of global issues and responsibilities.

It is a self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the wider online industry.

This includes internet service providers (ISPs), mobile operators and manufacturers, content service providers, telecommunications and filtering companies, search providers and the financial sector as well as blue-chip and other organisations who support IWF for corporate social responsibility reasons.

In partnership with many organisations the IWF strives to create continued awareness of the role and purpose of the IWF and aims to foster trust and reassurance in the internet for current and future users.

About Bloxx
Headquartered in the UK with sales offices in Holland, the USA and Australia, Bloxx offers appliance-based web filtering for medium and large organisations in both the business and public sectors.