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When we identify child sexual abuse content online, our priority is to have it removed from the internet as quickly as possible. To achieve this, we trace the URL to determine the location of the physical server hosting the content. This allows us to identify the appropriate partners to work with and the country in which action needs to be taken.
Once the content is removed from the physical server (the original source) we can be confident that it has also been removed from any websites that were linking to it, such as blogs, forums, or image-hosting platforms.
Kate to add map of continents to replace chart here
Europe continues to be the largest host of criminal URLs we take action on.
| Host Country | Number of Reports | % of Total Number of Reports | % Last Year | % Point Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bulgaria | 87,959 | 28% | 9% | +19% |
| United States | 49,021 | 16% | 14% | +2% |
| Netherlands | 33,788 | 11% | 29% | -18% |
| Romania | 21,188 | 7% | 7% | +0% |
| France | 20,475 | 7% | 1% | +6% |
| Germany | 18,401 | 6% | 2% | +4% |
| Malaysia | 17,046 | 5% | 5% | +0% |
| Moldova | 9,941 | 3% | 3% | +0% |
| Iceland | 7,455 | 2% | 0% | +2% |
| Sweden | 6,820 | 2% | 1% | +1% |
| Russian Federation | 5,797 | 2% | 2% | +0% |
| Panama | 5,275 | 2% | 1% | +1% |
| Iran | 5,083 | 2% | - | 0% |
| Ukraine | 4,987 | 2% | 2% | +0% |
| Vietnam | 3,344 | 1% | 0% | +1% |
| Lithuania | 1,985 | 1% | 3% | -2% |
| Hong Kong | 1,959 | 1% | 8% | -7% |
| Finland | 1,414 | 0% | 0% | +0% |
| Poland | 1,216 | 0% | 3% | -2% |
| Child Reporting Service | 1,162 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Slovak Republic | 1,029 | 0% | 1% | -1% |
| India | 982 | 0% | 0% | +0% |
| United Kingdom | 950 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Onion URL (Dark web) | 705 | 0% | 0% | +0% |
| Estonia | 596 | 0% | 0% | +0% |
| Latvia | 518 | 0% | 3% | -2% |
| Azerbaijan | 446 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Luxembourg | 370 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Singapore | 266 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Japan | 219 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Czech Republic | 215 | 0% | 3% | -2% |
| Indonesia | 198 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Switzerland | 119 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Korea (South) | 94 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Serbia | 64 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Canada | 40 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Italy | 39 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| United Arab Emirates | 37 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Iraq | 36 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Laos | 34 | 0% | - | 0% |
| South Africa | 30 | 0% | - | +0% |
| Seychelles | 30 | 0% | - | +0% |
| Austria | 27 | 0% | 2% | -2% |
| Bosnia-Herzegovina | 26 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Spain | 25 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Norway | 22 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Albania | 22 | 0% | 0% | +0% |
| Brazil | 19 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Hungary | 16 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Thailand | 13 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Australia | 13 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| China | 11 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Cambodia | 11 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Croatia | 10 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Mauritius | 8 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Denmark | 7 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Belize | 7 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Israel | 5 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Bangladesh | 5 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Armenia | 4 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Turkey | 3 | 0% | 0% | -0% |
| Mexico | 2 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Chile | 2 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Uruguay | 1 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Taiwan | 1 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Slovenia | 1 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Nigeria | 1 | 0% | - | 0% |
| Montenegro | 1 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Kazakhstan | 1 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Ireland | 1 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Cyprus | 1 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Overall Total | 311,596 | 100% | 100% |
We have added +/- to reflect the movement in percentage point terms (increase or decrease) on the previous year’s figures.
In 2025, hosting patterns of criminal URLs actioned by our Analysts shifted globally, with notable increases in some countries and declines in others.
Increases:
Decreases:
International
When we seek the removal of content that we have reported, we spot patterns in hosting. Once we report a site, we monitor it daily to check whether the content has been removed. This is when we realise which hosts are more receptive to our requests to remove the content, and which ones take longer or require more information before they respond. While we cannot draw conclusions about which platforms or countries are “more prone” to abuse, we are seeing a rise in international hosting. In our experience, this growth reflects a more connected world, the increasing reliability of servers in developing regions, and the lower-cost hosting options that may be a result of this expanding market.
There are more factors to consider when reporting child sexual abuse material that is hosted internationally: legal parameters in that country, language barriers, or a company structure that may make it hard to find an abuse contact to send notices to. We make sure that we continue to take action on child sexual abuse material regardless of where it is hosted.
We recognise that many providers have little idea how their services are being misused, and that content removal happens fastest when we can work with the right people overseeing these hosting companies.
When we explain that an image of a child abused in Europe, circulated across the Americas, is now hosted on a server in Asia, it becomes clear how borderless and global the issue of re-victimisation is.
Keywords
As analysts, we understand that some of the darkest parts of the internet exist on some of the world’s most popular platforms. We recognise the internet isn’t confined by borders, and the intelligence that we collect shouldn’t be either. Whether it be a new term popping up, a platform shift, or a special way offenders communicate, this global intelligence feeds directly into one of our most hands-on tools: the keywords list.
This list isn’t static; it evolves as we learn and represents the context only an analyst can understand. Keyword terms are not always obvious, they may have originated from slang that has been unearthed in one corner of the world or phrases that when translated into English mean something entirely different, but the context that we can provide gives the vital clues as to how abuse is shared, ultimately helping us fight the spread and accessibility of child sexual abuse.
Keyword intelligence is vital to the work we do in-house at IWF but also to our wider impact through our members. This year, the expansion of our keywords service has translated into fewer missed cues and a clearer path for our members to intervene in the sharing of child sexual abuse that often occurs in plain sight. This service means intelligence evolves beyond stagnant information, but becomes tangible leads to follow, directly protecting children online despite their geographical location.
What this year has highlighted is that as global connectivity grows and the internet is opened up to more parts of the world, having services that span that breadth is essential. Our mission to protect children isn’t confined to those that speak English, and our international understanding has been key in spanning that reach, making sure no child is left behind regardless of where they are. Protecting children in all corners of the earth starts with analysts like us, and our tools reflect that.
The UK hosts a small volume of online child sexual abuse content.
In 2025, of the 311,599 reports that displayed child sexual abuse imagery:
The longer an image remains online, the greater the opportunity for offenders to view and share it, causing further harm to victims, therefore we must act quickly to take action to remove it.
Working in partnership with the online industry, we push for the rapid removal of this content. The ‘takedown’ clock runs from the moment we issue a takedown notice to the hosting provider to the point at which the content is removed.
Fastest removal: 1 minute
We have continued to see an increase in the number of hosts – companies whose servers are ‘hosting’ or storing a website’s files so the site can be visited online – which are registered as being owned by one single person.
These individuals, often overseas nationals and residents, use company formation services to provide a legitimate office address and the features of an official UK business. They then create a private limited company based in the UK. Often, they will only keep the company live for a year or two, then close it down.
While active, they appear to lease server capacity from much bigger, legitimate companies. This means that, when tracing the location of the website host, a UK ‘head office’ address may appear while the online content is in fact hosted on a server in a different country. The company has no physical presence in the UK, bar a correspondence address.
These ‘one man’ hosts can be easily spotted by analysts, but if they are hosting CSAM, seeking its takedown can be frustrating. Locating the true server location often requires navigating multiple layers of obfuscation. Sometimes those larger, legitimate hosts are reluctant to take web pages or sites offline immediately - it’s not unusual for companies to allow their clients a grace period before removing online content from their servers. We also see individuals profiting financially from these ventures, as every ‘hit’ on their site will generate revenue.
We have learnt to recognise these types of hosts and know to dig deeper when we see them. We have also discovered that other hotlines around the world are encountering similar problems locally, and we are working together to establish best-practice approaches.
More than half 196,101 (63%) of child sexual abuse URLs that we have actioned this year were traced to hosting services in EU Member states.
The table of countries below shows where the servers responsible for hosting the illegal webpages were physically located, at the point when we actioned the illegal content.
| Host country | Number of reports | % of total number of reports | Last year | % last year | % point change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bulgaria | 87,959 | 28% | 25,180 | 9% | +19% |
| Netherlands | 33,788 | 11% | 83,037 | 29% | -18% |
| Romania | 21,188 | 7% | 21,528 | 7% | -1% |
| France | 20,475 | 7% | 2,091 | 1% | +6% |
| Germany | 18,401 | 6% | 4,448 | 2% | +4% |
| Sweden | 6,820 | 2% | 1,552 | 1% | +2% |
| Lithuania | 1985 | 1% | 8,484 | 3% | -2% |
| Finland | 1,414 | 0% | 1,027 | 0% | +0% |
| Poland | 1216 | 0% | 8,077 | 3% | -2% |
| Slovak Republic | 1,029 | 0% | 3,422 | 1% | -1% |
| Estonia | 596 | 0% | 65 | 0% | +0% |
| Latvia | 518 | 0% | 7,540 | 3% | -2% |
| Luxembourg | 370 | 0% | 486 | 0% | 0% |
| Czech Republic | 215 | 0% | 7,859 | 3% | -3% |
| Italy | 39 | 0% | 70 | 0% | 0% |
| Austria | 27 | 0% | 6,144 | 2% | -2% |
| Spain | 25 | 0% | 36 | 0% | 0% |
| Hungary | 16 | 0% | 27 | 0% | 0% |
| Croatia | 10 | 0% | 0 | - | +0% |
| Denmark | 7 | 0% | 3 | 0% | +0% |
| Cyprus | 1 | 0% | 0 | 9% | +0% |
| Ireland | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 0% |
| Slovenia | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0% | +0% |
| Total | 196,101 | 63% | 140,911 | 62% | +11% |
We have added +/- to reflect the movement of an increase or decrease on the previous year’s figures.
The IWF continues to enjoy strong relations with partners in Europe, and in the Hotline, we foster close working relationships with our EU counterparts. When European hosting companies are abused by bad actors, we work together to ensure child sexual abuse imagery is removed quickly and efficiently. We regularly share intelligence on how best to pursue a takedown request with a local host, corroborate the tracing of hosting locations, and exchange regional knowledge to inform our work.
Europe remains a global hub for internet hosting, offering an extensive network and reliable connectivity. Through regular contact with hosts and other industry associates in Europe, we seek to build effective alliances and maximise our positive impact on takedown times.
In instances where a smaller, harder-to-contact hosting company has been abused – or an individual may have maliciously exploited legitimate services to share child sexual abuse material online – we are often able to work with a larger hosting provider further up the infrastructure ‘chain’ to seek the removal of web pages.
As site owners and users can move their content from host to host and even country to country with increasing speed and decreasing inconvenience and downtime, it is critical that we remain vigilant and maintain an international outlook, monitoring hosting beyond our own national borders.