British non-governmental organization Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has published its annual report. IWF is a sort of rapid response center where users report cases of illegal content being published online, especially pornographic materials involving minors. According to IWF, the number of complaints on such materials in 2015 has increased compared to 2013 more than five times. However, it shows not only that there is more child porn on the Internet, but also that regular users have become more active when fighting this evil.
In 2015 IWF experts have recorded 68092 unique URL addresses involved in the dissemination of such content. They were found on 1991 domains. The lion’s share of illegal content (91 percent) was found in five generic top-level domains - .COM, .ORG, .NET, and ccTLDs of Sweden .SE and, unfortunately, Russia - .RU. Moreover, the report states that in 2015 distributors of child pornography started using new gTLDs for their purposes for the first time. We are talking about 436 domain names in new domain zones, many of which, according to IWF experts, were initially registered to distribute illegal content. Even though the share of the new domains in dissemination of pornographic materials involving minors is extremely low, the fact that they are used by criminals IWF sees as an unpleasant and disturbing tendency.
