In this series, we talk to staff from the organisations that work alongside and support the education sector. Our second conversation is with Tom Dyson from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), who talks us through what the organisation does.
The Internet Watch Foundation is a charity that has been working for 30 years to locate, assess and remove child sexual abuse imagery from the global internet. It’s a massive task. When it began, more than 18 per cent of the world’s child sexual abuse imagery was hosted in the UK. Today, the figure has reduced to less than 1 per cent, meaning the IWF’s work has made the UK is one of the most difficult places to host this kind of content.
We chatted with Tom Dyson, the IWF’s Head of Marketing, and asked him to tell us a little more about the organisation’s work and the one change it would like to see in the future…
IWF’s important and unique remit
What does the IWF do, day to day?
TD: The IWF’s core work is tackling online child sexual abuse (CSA) imagery. The public can anonymously report suspected imagery via the IWF website and our analysts proactively search the global internet for this criminal material. Then, our analysts assess it against UK law and, where it breaks the law, they will work with partner organisations, hosting companies or law enforcement to seek its removal. To help with the wider identification of CSA images, the IWF also creates “hashes” (digital fingerprints) that are specific to each one, so they can be identified and removed quickly. This helps our 220-plus member companies – including Meta, Google and Microsoft – detect and block known images.
Alongside this, we run our Report Remove service with Childline for young people to confidentially report and remove their own nude or sexual images and videos. We also do policy work with UK and EU legislators, youth-focused campaigning, and undertake research – including early reporting on AI-generated CSA content.
Is there a common misconception teachers or parents have about online safety that you would like to correct?
TD: One of the misconceptions that we see repeatedly in schools is where staff can inadvertently blame the victim when a pupil’s image is shared without consent, at times punishing or suspending the victim rather than safeguarding them – and sometimes, this can have lasting consequences.
As image-sharing happens online, it’s often regarded as less damaging than contact abuse. However, research from the charity, Protect Children, (which works directly with victims and survivors) found that online abuse can actually have a longer-lasting impact, partly due to the uncertainty of not knowing whether images are still circulating.
We’re working to raise awareness that online abuse is genuinely as serious as contact abuse and should be treated accordingly.
Caring for staff is key
We can only imagine the horror of some of the things IWF analysts see online. How do they cope with it and how does the organisation look after them?
TD: The work starts in recruitment and we have a very robust process of interviewing analyst candidates, with three interviews with different people, one of whom is a counsellor. These three people all contribute to the decision of whether the candidate is suitable for the role.
On appointment, we slowly acclimatise new analysts with lower category content and then build up to the more severe content. We also operate a programme of working shorter hours and mandatory breaks, so people aren’t just viewing content for hours on end. Then there’s also mandatory monthly counselling and an annual psychological assessment. Added to this, we have a very caring, open working culture in the organisation where family lives take priority over work. And through all these things combined, we actually see a very low turnover of staff.
Working with young people
How do you get your message out there and tailor it to different age groups?
TD: We tailor our messaging through co-creation and work directly with the target audience rather than assuming what will work. For a teen-focused campaign like the recent Think Before You Share, that means partnering with schools or youth organisations to test terminology, with safeguarding as the top priority – and it’s shaped by young people telling us what actually sounds authentic. A similar approach applies with parents and tech companies, where a supportive board of trustees from major tech firms helps guide the strategy and messaging.
The IWF is also happy to let better-placed partners front our joint campaigns. For example, we have an upcoming one which will be led by Childline, since its brand carries more trust with young people.
Can you share an example of how your work has changed after listening to feedback from young people?
TD: With our Think Before You Share campaign, we had initially provided three different concepts, and the one the young people chose was the one they felt would get most engagement from their peers. Their suggestions pushed it beyond where we thought it would be comfortable to take it and we did get a little bit of backlash for it, which we had anticipated – if you’ve seen the campaign, you’ll know why! But it landed really well and the engagement we got with the target audience was fantastic, and that was really the whole purpose.
No time to lose…
What is your one wish for the future as an organisation?
TD: Our wish is for tech companies, governments and regulators to work together so children are better protected from sexual abuse online, including on end-to-end encrypted services.
Privacy matters deeply, and so does the privacy of a child whose abuse is recorded and shared. I believe we can protect both. For example, a service can check whether an image matches material already confirmed as child sexual abuse before it is encrypted and sent. That can stop known images from spreading while keeping people’s conversations confidential.
I’d like to see more companies work with organisations like IWF to put effective safeguards in place, and governments create the conditions for them to do so. Children and survivors deserve services that take their safety and their privacy seriously.
Catch up with the IWF this October!
Tom Dyson from the IWF will share data on the scale of online harms in his session at the free one-day KCSIE conference on Thursday, 8th October at NetSupport’s office in Peterborough.
