URL analysis
Since 2016, we have seen an increase in ‘commercial’ services on the ‘dark web’ – dedicated websites offering child sexual abuse imagery for sale.
The dark web is the hidden part of the internet that isn’t visible to search engines and can only be accessed using Tor or a similar dark web-compatible browser. Tor is anonymity software that makes it difficult to trace users’ online activity.
Of the 531 dark web URLs (previously referred to as ‘hidden sites’) we found distributing child sexual abuse imagery in 2024, 437 (82%) were assessed as being commercial. Due to the anonymous nature of dark web hosting, these commercial websites increasingly accept payment in a growing number of virtual currencies as well as credit cards.
We work closely with the wider payments services industry and our Virtual Currency Alerts help our Members in the virtual payments sector to identify payments which are associated with child sexual abuse imagery. We continue to monitor trends in these payments and share this intelligence with our partners in industry and international law enforcement.