Dublin web monitor reports 9,600 child porn sites a month

A Dublin-based worldwide internet monitoring service has said that its members are passing an average of 9,600 confirmed reports of child pornography on to police every month.

The International Association of Internet Hotlines (Inhope) has spent more than two years trying to assess the scale of internet pornography. It represents hotlines in 25 countries where members of the public can ring up to complain about the contents of websites.

Inhope, based in Sandyford, said that between September 2004 and December 2006, its network processed 1.9 million reports of illegal activity on the internet. Of those, 20,000 a month had illegal or harmful content, and almost half of those contained child pornography.