In April 2024, the Stanford Internet Observatory published "The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Online Child Safety Ecosystem," a report analyzing the CyberTipline through which online platforms report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and child sexual exploitation.
The report made recommendations to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which operates the CyberTipline, as well as to other entities.
A hundred days after the publication of the report, several of the recommendations have already been acted upon.
First, the report recommended that Congress alleviate confusion concerning liability when cloud providers provide services to NCMEC, as addressed in the REPORT Act. The act, which gives vendors that provide services to NCMEC the same limited liability as NCMEC, was signed into law on May 07, 2024.
Second, the report advised extending the retention period for reported CSAM. The Act extended the mandatory retention period to one year and permits platforms to voluntarily preserve reported CSAM for a longer period for the purpose of reducing or preventing online child sexual exploitation.
Third, the report suggested the alliance of tech companies called the Technology Coalition provide informational resources to platforms that are not members. On July 18, 2024, the organization announced a free resource hub "to facilitate and promote knowledge sharing of basic trust and safety practices" around child online safety to all tech employees.
Finally, the report suggested increasing NCMEC's budget, which the Senate appropriations committee did for fiscal year 2025 – an increase of four million dollars.
However, some suggestions in the report have not yet been put into action, including that platforms make a "sustained commitment… to invest engineering and personnel resources into improving the quality of their CyberTipline reports"; that NCMEC create a prominent section of its website "focused on onboarding platforms"; and that law enforcement partner with qualified outside researchers to increase transparency concerning that they do with CyberTipline reports. Riana Pfefferkorn "Marking Progress in the Online Child Safety Ecosystem" www.techpolicy.press (Jul. 13, 2024).
Commentary
People who have a reasonable suspicion of child sexual exploitation should report to child protection services and/or local law enforcement.
In addition, you can report online exploitation of children to the CyberTipline, which will then communicate with your local resources.
According to NCMEC, the following information should be reported to the CyberTipline, and to any law enforcement:
- "Nudes or sexual images/videos of a child;
- Someone chatting online with a child about sex;
- Sexual abuse of a child that occurs offline;
- Someone seeking or offering a child for sexual acts in exchange for something of value (e.g., money, food, gas, shelter, clothing, drugs);
- Unwanted sexual emails or texts either involving children or sent to a child;
- Websites or domains that contain sexual content but have similar names or URLs to mainstream sites that may be misleading to children;
- Websites or domains that have sexual content (words or images) embedded in them which minors might see;
- And other forms of sexual exploitation of a child not listed here."
Use the CyberTipline https://report.cybertip.org/reporting to report "information about the possible sexual exploitation and/or abuse of a child." Those adults, who were victimized by child sexual exploitation or abuse as a child, can report to the CyberTipline, too.
Individuals have the option of making reports anonymously.
When NCMEC receives a report of child sexual exploitation, the organization will first review the information internally to quickly identify children in immediate or impending harm and contact law enforcement. If the reporter provided contact information, NCMEC may contact them to provide support resources. NCMEC states that it provides the report to local law enforcement if a location can be identified, or federal law enforcement if no location can be identified.
NCMEC also has resources to help remove nude images of children online. Making a CyberTipline report is the first step in this process.
If individuals have questions or need help making a report, they can call 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. Those who believe they are in immediate danger should call 911. "Frequently Asked Questions" report.cybertip.org.
In addition to reporting child sexual exploitation to the CyberTipline, safe adults must follow any other mandatory reporter laws in their state.
