INTERNATIONAL partnerships are the key to combating online images of child pornography, experts have said.

More than 30,000 websites containing indecent images of children have been removed from the internet over 10 years.

Internet Watch Foundation chief executive Peter Robbins said partnerships between countries and public awareness would help the authorities deal with the problem.

He said: "We need to get people reporting these incidents. Any complaint against something here in the UK we can deal with through the IWF, otherwise we advise the relevant country through their hotline, if they have one, or the police that there is a problem."

Set up in 1996, the IWF has received more than 120,000 reports of illegal web content. The vast majority of reports - 85 per cent - are related to suspected child abuse websites.

Now, the organisation is focused on working in partnership with similar bodies around the world.

Mr Robbins said: "It's a partnership approach - we get in touch with the hosting provider to get them to remove it, and try to find out who the person was that put it up there so they can be dealt with."

Severity

Since the creation of the IWF, the number of sites originating in Britain which contain illegal material has fallen from 18 per cent to 0.2 per cent. However, in the past 12 months, the severity of the images has significantly increased.

Mr Robbins believes this is due to the ability of pay-per-view sites, which often show hardcore images, to slip through the net.

He said: "Pay-per-view websites use special sophisticated mechanisms and technology to avoid detection. They move their content from country to country, placing it on different servers. It means that by the time one country sees it and decides to do something about it, it has moved elsewhere."

Mr Robbins said that although it is "relatively easy" to track where the content goes to, the speed at which it moves means authorities cannot keep up.

Now, the IWF is encouraging other nations to set up hotlines for the public to report illegal web content.

Apart from the suspected child abuse images, 10 per cent of reports related to apparent criminally obscene websites and five per cent to suspected incitement to racial hatred.

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