Internet Watch Foundation - The Website

The Website

The IWF's website offers a web-based government-endorsed method for reporting suspect online content and remains the only such operation in the United Kingdom. It acts as a Relevant Authority in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) concerning Section 46 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (meaning that its analysts will not be prosecuted for looking at illegal content in the course of their duties). Reports can be submitted anonymously. According to the IWF MOU "If potentially illegal content is hosted in the UK the IWF will work with the relevant service provider and British police agency to have the content ‘taken down’ and assist as necessary to have the offender(s) responsible for distributing the offending content detected." Potentially illegal content includes:

• Indecent images of children under 18 hosted anywhere in the world;
• Criminally obscene content hosted in the UK, or anywhere in the world if uploaded by someone in the UK (under the Obscene Publications Acts);

However, almost the whole of the IWF site is concerned with suspected child pornography with little mention of other criminally obscene material, also within their remit. Images judged by the IWF to be child pornography are blocked.

The Government claimed that they would also be handling images of adult "extreme pornography", which became illegal for people in the UK to possess on 26 January 2009. The IWF includes "extreme pornography" as an example under "criminally obscene content", meaning that they will report material hosted in the UK, or uploaded by someone in the UK, but regarding blocking sites "with those categories, our remit will only go so far as to refer sites hosted in the UK to the appropriate authorities."

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

They are funded by the European Union and the online industry. This includes Internet service providers, 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 the IWF for corporate social responsibility reasons.

Through their "Hotline" reporting system, the organisation helps ISPs to combat abuse of their services through a "notice and take down" service by alerting them to any potentially illegal content within their remit on their systems and simultaneously invites the police to investigate the publisher.

The IWF has connections with the Virtual Global Taskforce, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.