Online abuse images surge as predators dupe children

THERE has been a steep surge in the number of children being tricked into making indecent images of themselves online, the UK’S internet watchdog has warned, adding that almost half of abuse images it finds are self-generated.

The Internet Watch Foundation ( IWF) said such pictures made up 44 per cent of all abuse material it uncovered online for the first half of this year, compared with 29 per cent of the 132,000 images it deleted in 2019.

The rise comes as the charity warned that children had been spending more time indoors and online during the pandemic, and urged parents to have “frank discussions” with them about the dangers posed by strangers online.

The figures confirm a growing trend in recent years of children being duped by paedophiles into making images of themselves. The IWF said children were often tricked into appearing on live streams by offenders pretending to be another child, who then took screenshots without the victim’s knowledge.

Some of the self-generated images found by the IWF’S analysts were classed as Category A, the most serious.

The charity has warned that girls aged 11 to 13 appeared to be most likely to fall victim, as it was an age when they often got their first smartphone.

Susie Hargreaves, the chief executive of the IWF, said predators were increasingly targeting children in their own homes.

She said: “You may think your child is safe in their bedroom, but even there they may have been approached by a predator. From there, they can be blackmailed, coerced, or bullied into making videos for these criminals.

“That we are seeing even more of these videos is a disturbing development, and we would urge parents to speak frankly to their children about the kind of criminals who may be waiting out there.”

The charity said the rise in self-generated images has led to record amounts of abuse material online. Last year, the number of sites uncovered by the IWF rose by more than a quarter (26 per cent) compared with the 2018.

The figures highlight concerns over the risk posed by live-streaming apps. The UK’S most senior child protection officer, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, previously warned parents that they are a “magnet for paedophiles”.

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Percentage of images of children found by the Internet Watch Foundation this year which were self-generated