Report Remove is Child Support Helpline ran by Childline. It exists to young people under 18 in the UK to confidentially report sexual images and videos of themselves and remove them from the internet. The charity works with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), an organisation dedicated to removing nude images of under 18s from the internet. The process is simple for the user. They create an account, enter their age range and report the image or video to the IWF. They can also request support from their Childline counsellor.
The IWF’s process of removing the videos varies based on the location. If the content is found to be hosted in the UK, they contact the police and issue a takedown notice to the host, which they must obey. It is then usually taken down in hours.
However, this is less than 1% happen in the UK. A lot of it is hosted in a country that is part of INHOPE, an association of around 50 countries (UK, EU member states, Australia, USA, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, Russia and Japan) dedicated to combatting child sexual abuse material. If the host is in INHOPE, then the process is to send a report to the INHOPE reporting system which then forwards the report to the relevant INHOPE hotline. That branch will then follow their country’s procedure, the duration of which depends on the country, but the IWF will be sure to follow the process and pressure the branch if needed. If the host isn’t in an INHOPE country, the case is reported to the UK’s National Crime Agency, who forward it to Interpol, the international police organisation, who forward it to the appropriate country.
The IWF has been quite successful with their processes. In 2024, they reported that “one million webpages (1,228,090) showing at least one, and often many tens, hundreds or thousands of child sexual abuse images and videos have been removed from the internet thanks to our work over the past five years alone”.
