Geographical hosting: Domains

 

Unique domains by Hosting Country

This report presents the third year in which we have published our findings covering the volume of individual URLs actioned on each domain, in addition to the number of unique domains identified as carrying child sexual abuse material. 

Our extended analysis covers distribution across classification groups including host country, Top-Level Domain (TLD), commerciality, and content recidivism following takedown and suspension actions.

A country hosting as few as one or two domains can quickly find itself in the top 10 listings when counting the volume of URLs over the course of a year, and while volume in this respect is important to measure, the number of unique child sexual abuse websites hosted in a country can provide a very different indication of the problem in that territory.

For clarity, the diagram below sets out the domain naming conventions used throughout this report.

 

 

Top 10 unique domains by host country

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Number of unique second level domains by country

Host Country 

Domains 

United States  

       1,811  

Russian Federation  

       1,668  

Netherlands  

       1,285  

.Onion URL (Hidden Service)*  

           333  

Hong Kong  

           233  

Ukraine  

           213  

Moldova  

           204  

France  

           154  

Germany  

           148  

Finland  

             96  

Malaysia  

             85  

Panama  

             80  

United Kingdom  

             72  

Romania  

             62  

Sweden  

             61  

Austria  

             57  

Czech Republic  

             57  

Bulgaria  

             56  

Singapore  

             51  

Japan  

             45  

Latvia  

             39  

Switzerland  

             39  

Korea (South)  

             37  

Poland  

             25  

Norway  

             23  

India  

             20  

Vietnam  

             16  

Azerbaijan  

             14  

Estonia  

             14  

Canada  

             12  

Portugal  

             11  

South Africa  

             11  

Indonesia  

                8  

Turkey  

                8  

United Arab Emirates  

                8  

Hungary  

                7  

Italy  

                7  

Kazakhstan  

                7  

Mauritius  

                6  

Brazil  

                5  

Lithuania  

                5  

Australia  

                4  

Belgium  

                4  

Israel  

                4  

Luxembourg  

                4  

Spain  

                4  

Montenegro  

                3  

Denmark  

                2  

Iceland  

                2  

Iran  

                2  

Slovak Republic  

                2  

Thailand  

                2  

Anguilla  

                1  

Cambodia  

                1  

China  

                1  

Cyprus  

                1  

Georgia  

                1  

New Zealand  

                1  

Seychelles  

                1  

Taiwan  

                1  

Vanuatu  

                1  

The data represented above shows the number of unique domains we identified to be hosted in each country. Each domain was counted only once, regardless of the number of actions taken against each domain. If a domain changed hosting country location at any point during the year, then the site was counted in each of the locations it was encountered; changes of IP address and/or hosting provider that did not result in a change of country are excluded from this analysis.

  • A total of 60 countries were identified as locations abused for hosting child sexual abuse material, which is a small increase from 55 countries identified in 2022.
  • Eight of the countries reappearing in the top 10 hosting countries in 2023 remain unchanged, with the exception of Finland and Moldova which are new entrants.
  • Finland saw an increase from 6 to 96 unique domains (1,500%) and Moldova saw an increase from 53 to 204 unique domains (285%).

The USA, Russian Federation and Netherlands continue to attract the highest volume of child sexual abuse domains with each country hosting well over 1,000 unique domains.

*The .onion domains identified cannot be attributed to any specific hosting country and are provided for transparency.