Here at the IWF, we've created life-changing technology and data sets helping people who were sexually abused as children and whose images appear online. The IWF URL List , or more commonly, the block list, is a list of live webpages that show children
being sexually abused, a list used by the internet industry to block millions of criminal images from ever reaching the public eye.
It's a crucial service, protecting children, and people of all ages in their homes and places of
work. It stops horrifying videos from being stumbled across accidentally, and it thwarts some predators who visit the net to watch such abuse.
But now its effectiveness is in jeopardy. That block list which has for years stood
between exploited children and their repeated victimisation faces a challenge called DNS over HTTPS which could soon render it obsolete.
It could expose millions of internet users across the globe - and of any age -- to the risk
of glimpsing the most terrible content.
So how does it work? DNS stands for Domain Name System and it's the phonebook by which you look something up on the internet. But the new privacy technology could hide user requests, bypass
filters like parental controls, and make globally-criminal material freely accessible. What's more, this is being fast-tracked, by some, into service as a default which could make the IWF list and all kinds of other protections defunct.
At the IWF, we don't want to demonise technology. Everyone's data should be secure from unnecessary snooping and encryption itself is not a bad thing. But the IWF is all about protecting victims and we say that the way in which DNS
over HTTPS is being implemented is the problem.
If it was set as the default on the browsers used by most of us in the UK, it would have a catastrophic impact. It would make the horrific images we've spent all these years blocking
suddenly highly accessible. All the years of work for children's protection could be completely undermined -- not just busting the IWF's block list but swerving filters, bypassing parental controls, and dodging some counter terrorism efforts as well.
From the IWF's perspective, this is far more than just a privacy or a tech issue, it's all about putting the safety of children at the top of the agenda, not the bottom. We want to see a duty of care placed upon DNS providers so they
are obliged to act for child safety and cannot sacrifice protection for improved customer privacy.
