Web cleared of 132,000 child sex images by UK safety project

MORE than 100,000 indecent images of children have been removed from the internet by a governmentbacked programme since January.

Project Arachnid has so far checked over a billion web pages and identified 132,000 explicit or illegal pictures, almost all of which have been removed.

It was awarded £600,000 in funding from the Home Office earlier this year.

On a visit to Washington to demonstrate the technology to Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter, Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, called for governments to work together to stop such images being shared. The trip is part of a bid to encourage US firms to work with the British Government to curb the number of explicit images of children on the internet.

Ms Rudd said: “The support of the technology firms is crucial in the fight against the scourge of online child sexual exploitation.

“Project Arachnid is an excellent example of the kind of innovative technology that brings together NGOS and technology companies to tackle online child sexual exploitation.

Arachnid, what it can do and how it has been developed, is emblematic of commitments made by Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter under the WEPROTECT Global Alliance.

“The backing of the tech sector for this cause will help ensure we have a global response to this issue.”

Arachnid can be deployed across websites, forums and chat rooms to detect any illegal content and flag it for removal.

The tool identifies sexual images of children and sends a message to the website hosting them, demanding they be taken down.