A Marathon Challenge for Charity

Proud Hastings father of three will run a marathon a month to raise money for the Cambridgeshire-based charity, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

Alan Naylor, currently training as a personal trainer, will be taking part in marathons across the country throughout 2014. Alan is currently training for his first Marathon of the year, the Heartbreaker Marathon, taking place on 23 February in the New Forest, Hampshire.

Previously a Hastings bar owner, Alan is hoping to raise over £2,500 to support the IWF’s work removing child sexual abuse content online. Alan will train by completing a number of physical challenges to prepare himself for running

Alan Naylor, (30) said: “I was sitting down at work with a cup of coffee and the Sun newspaper when I read an article about the work that the IWF carries out. There was a particular harrowing example of online child sexual abuse that I found emotionally hard to digest and comprehend. I have three beautiful children myself and could not imagine the despair, fear and anxiety they would face in a similar situation and it was the vulnerability of these innocent children which I found such a difficult pill to swallow.

“I am an extremely active person and I love physical challenges so after giving it some thought I decided that a marathon a month would be a great way of raising some awareness and I could also generate some sponsorship that could go to the great and invaluable work of the IWF.”

Susie Hargreaves, Internet Watch Foundation CEO, said: “Alan has set himself an incredibly tough challenge but he runs for a worthwhile cause – the fight against child sexual abuse imagery. Our team are grateful for his efforts and will be cheering him on every step of the way.”

To keep up to date with Alan’s progress throughout the year follow @naylorfullforce. You can also show your support through #MarathonChallenge and donate at https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/iwfmarathonchallenge

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Notes to editors

Contact:     

Alan Naylor is happy to be contacted by journalists on; 01424 255594/07540 890227. Twitter; @Naylorfullforce. For more information about Alan please visit http://iwfmarathonchallenge.com/

Emma Hardy, Director of External Relations, 01223 203030/07929 553679 or [email protected]. Twitter: @IWF_Emma.  

About the Challenge

Marathon Dates:

·         23/02/14 – Heartbreaker Marathon; New Forest, Hampshire

·         23/03/14 – Hastings Half Marathon

·         20/04/14 – London Marathon

·         31/05/14 – Kent Road running marathon, Gravesend

·         28/06/14 – Midnight Marathon Run; Talybont On Usk Brecon

·         27/07/14 – Bath running festival

·         17/08/14 – Isle of White Marathon

·         28/09/14 – Tonbridge Half Marathon

·         26/10/14 – Trionium Greensand Marathon

·         16/11/14 – Gosport Half Marathon

·         07/12/14 – The Mince Pie ten mile run; Peacehaven Sussex

About the Internet Watch Foundation

The IWF was established in 1996 by the internet industry to provide the UK internet Hotline for the public and IT professionals to report criminal online content in a secure and confidential way.

The Hotline service can be used anonymously to report content within our remit:

    child sexual abuse images hosted anywhere in the world;
    criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK;
    non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK.

Success

We help internet service providers and hosting companies to combat the abuse of their networks through our ‘notice and takedown’ service which alerts them to content within our remit so they can remove it from their networks.

We also provide unique data to law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad to assist investigations into the distributors. As a result of this approach the content we deal with has been virtually eradicated from UK networks.

As sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad, we facilitate the industry-led initiative to protect users from inadvertent exposure to this content by blocking access to it through our provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse web pages.

Achievements

    By sharing intelligence with police the IWF aided the identification and rescue of 12 children in the past two years;
    Less than 1% of child sexual abuse content is hosted in the UK since 2003, down from 18% in 1996;
    Child sexual abuse content is removed in the UK typically within 60 minutes;
    Time taken to remove child sexual abuse content hosted outside the UK halved to 10 days in 2011;
    Over 400,000 web pages assessed since 1996;
    100,000 URLs removed for containing criminal content.

Self-regulation

We are an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the online industry, including internet service providers (ISPs), mobile operators, content  providers, hosting providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector. Our self-regulatory partnership approach is widely recognised as a model of good practice in combating the abuse of technology for the dissemination of criminal content.

Sharing Good Practice

We work with UK government to influence initiatives developed to combat online abuse and this dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe to promote greater awareness of global issues, trends and responsibilities.

We work internationally with INHOPE Hotlines and other relevant organisations to encourage united global responses to the problem and wider adoption of good practice in combating child sexual abuse images on the internet.

Tactics

There are a number of tactics carried out by the IWF on a national and, where relevant, international basis which minimise the availability of child sexual abuse content online:

    Reporting mechanism for the public to report any inadvertent exposure to potentially criminal child sexual abuse content;
    ‘Notice and takedown’ system to swiftly remove child sexual abuse content at source in the UK;
    Targeted assessment and monitoring system to remove child sexual abuse content in newsgroups;
    Provision of a child sexual abuse URL list to internet service providers, mobile operators, search providers and filtering providers to help disrupt access to child sexual abuse content which is hosted outside the UK and not yet taken down;
    Working with domain name registries and registrars to deregister domain names dedicated to the distribution of child sexual abuse content.