Action urged on child abuse sites

A concerted international effort could see the end of websites that profit by selling images of child sex abuse, a leading action group has said.

The UK's Internet Watch Foundation conducted research to identify how many sites trade such images and concluded there are 2,755 such sites worldwide.

Of these, 80% are judged to be fully commercial operations.

The IWF said this "manageable" number could be eliminated if net firms, governments and police worked together.

Closing sites

The IWF, which identifies and shuts down UK hosts of child abuse images, said it carried out the research to quantify the scale of the problem.

Before now, said a spokeswoman for the IWF, uninformed speculation about sites that trade and traffic in images of child sexual abuse caused many to think the problem was impossible to tackle.

"We think 2,755 is a manageable number," said the spokeswoman. "We are now asking for a worldwide effort to go in and really combat this issue."

The figure of 2,755 had been static for the last three years, said the spokeswoman, though these sites typically moved country and host regularly to stay one step ahead of attempts to shut them down.

She added that the work of the IWF - alongside net firms, law enforcement agencies and government - has meant that fewer than 1% of child abuse sites are hosted in Britain.

The IWF also shared its list of sites hosting image of child sex abuse with net firms so Britons do not stumble over the sites inadvertently and can block efforts to reach them.

Similar work internationally could see the closing of most of these publicly available sites, said the spokeswoman.

"It would make it much harder for criminals to make money from the crime and thereby combat the problem," she said.

This would take co-ordination by a transnational body because the sites hopped to hosting firms in different countries so often.

Nobody has yet come forward to take on the problem, said the spokeswoman.

The research into child abuse sites was contained in the IWF's annual report in which it revealed its evidence helped convict seven paedophiles and that it had contributed information for a further 13 investigations.

Paypal to block 'unsafe browsers'

Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block "unsafe browsers" from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts.

Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.

Paypal said it was "an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4".

Phishing attacks trick users into handing over sensitive data.

Paypal said some users were still using Internet Explorer 3 , released more than 10 years ago. It lacks many of the security and safety features needed to protect users from phishing and other online attacks.

Legitimate sites

Paypal said it supported the use of Extended Validation SSL Certificates. Browsers which support the technology highlight the address bar in green when users are on a site that has been deemed legitimate.

The latest version of Internet Explorer support EV SSL certificates, while Firefox 2 supports it with an add-on but Apple's Safari browser for Mac and PCs does not.

"By displaying the green glow and company name, these newer browsers make it much easier for users to determine whether or not they're on the site that they thought they were visiting," said Paypal.

The steps were outlined in a white paper on managing phishing, written by the firm's chief information security officer Michael Barrett and Dan Levy, director of risk management.

In it, they said: "In our view letting users view the PayPal site on [an unsafe] browser is equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seatbelts."

Paypal described the battle against phishing as a "fast-moving chess match with the criminal community".