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Social media sites to block ‘hash list’ of child porn images

CALIFORNIA — Internet giants including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo are stepping up the fight against paedophiles, with a new system that automatically blocks images of child sexual abuse.

Facebook is working with other major companies to fight child pornography online. Photo: Reuters

Facebook is working with other major companies to fight child pornography online. Photo: Reuters

CALIFORNIA — Internet giants including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo are stepping up the fight against paedophiles, with a new system that automatically blocks images of child sexual abuse.

The companies have started using a database of thousands of known child sex abuse images compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), known as a “hash list”, to identify and block these images.

Each of the images has been assessed by a highly trained analyst and assigned a “digital fingerprint” (also known as a hash value) — a unique code created by running the image through an algorithm.

Any copies of the file that are made will produce the same hash value when analysed, so if anyone tries to share the image on Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter or Yahoo, these companies will automatically detect the hash value and block the image.

The hashing technology the tech companies will use to identify known child-abuse images has been developed by Google, and is now being shared with the wider industry.

The IWF said all eligible members would soon be offered access to the hash list.

A similar system is already used by Dropbox, Google and other companies to prevent users from sharing copyright-protected files with other users.

“The IWF hash list could be a game-changer and really steps up the fight against child sexual abuse images online,” said Ms Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF.

“It means victims’ images can be identified and removed more quickly, and we can prevent known child sexual abuse images from being uploaded to the Internet in the first place.”

The IWF said many Internet companies can make use of the hash list, including those that provide services such as the uploading, storage or search of images, filtering services, hosting services, social media and chat services, data centres, and connectivity services.

The hash list is constantly growing, and has the potential to reach millions of hashes of images.

The IWF claims to remove about 500 web addresses containing child sexual abuse material every day, with one Web address containing up to thousands of images.

However, Professor Will Stewart from the Institution of Engineering and Technology has previously warned that these measures are not a silver bullet.

The Internet was designed to provide adaptable routing, and makes even well-intentioned censorship difficult.

The digital fingerprinting system also only blocks child sex abuse images that have been identified by the IWF and subsequently added to the database. It is also possible to change the hash value by altering the image in some way.

“There is no quick technical fix that will protect victims,” he said. “The most effective approaches use education, responsible parenting, and more resources for enforcing the law.” THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

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