Commercial URLs

We define commercial child sexual abuse imagery as images or videos that appear to have been produced or used for the purposes of financial gain by the distributor. This could be because the site is making money directly or indirectly via subscription accounts, adverts or click through links, for example.

Of the 291,273 webpages we confirmed as containing child sexual abuse imagery in 2024, 7,028 (2%) were recorded by analysts as commercial in nature using methods such as those listed above. This is less than last year, when we took action against 8,076 (3%) commercial webpages.

These types of websites can contain a larger range of images than non-commercial sites, including child victims of all ages and imagery of varying severity. Images and videos of some of the worst abuse and the youngest children are offered for purchase on these sites.

Also see the section Unique domain frequency trends which provided some analysis of commercial vs non-commercial sites by domain, rather than URL.

Of the 7,028 commercial sites we actioned this year, 4,832 of these sites displayed evidence to our analysts that showed someone is indirectly making money, for example, via premium account access, advertising or click through links.  

The remaining 2,196 URLs displayed a direct option to purchase child sexual abuse. 851 of these had complete transparency on the payment options available to purchase the imagery, and most offered more than one payment option. 1,345 of the URLs displayed an option to purchase but the payment options were hidden, either behind a payment wall or a premium service was required to proceed further.  

• 518 URLs recorded 1,067 options of a virtual currency payment
• 291 URLs showed 506 options of a money transfer service
• 42 URLs showed 105 options of credit card services
• 1,345 URLs did not show the method of payment

Not all payment methods were visible in publicly accessible areas of the site. The IWF analysts were unable to see payment details on a majority of sites, where subscriptions or account setup was required or access was restricted by a payment wall.