NEWS 2018/11/29

Release:
NetClean Report 2018

The NetClean Report, which is released today, is a yearly investigation into child sexual abuse crime. It is based on a survey conducted with police officers from around the world. Earlier this year it was reported that child sexual abuse material is increasing, that the abuse is getting more violent and that police officers face bigger challenges because of developments in technology.

The focus of this year’s report is on some of these challenges, with the aim of highlighting how they affect the fight against child sexual abuse material.

Roughly 300 police officers responded to this year’s survey, which looks into the challenges they face when investigating child sexual abuse crime. One area of the survey looked at how developments in technology changes how offenders act, and how this affects their investigations. The strongest trend in the survey concerned “self-produced material”, with the majority of police officers reporting that material produced as a result of grooming or sexual extortion is common, and that the number of images is increasing. 

In this year’s report we have, for the first time, also interviewed businesses and organisations that use NetClean ProActive to detect child sexual abuse material in their IT environments. The result showed that one in 500 employees consumes child sexual abuse material on their work computer – a significant increase from our previously gathered data on this issue.