The number of commercial child sexual abuse websites has more than doubled in a single year, according to data from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which identified 15,031 such sites in 2025 compared with 7,028 in 2024 – a 114% increase. The figures, published by the charity that monitors and removes online child sexual abuse material (CSAM), paint a stark picture of an industry that experts say is generating “huge profits” for organised criminal gangs.
Explosion in commercial sites and ease of access
The IWF’s analysts found that the proportion of sites where users pay directly for content rose from 2% in 2024 to 5% in 2025, with prices ranging from £8.90 ($12) to £120 ($120) for the most extreme material. One IWF analyst, who asked not to be named, told the charity that the content is “very easy” to find and exists “across all social media platforms”. “I can find child sexual abuse content, the worst categories, category A content, which is penetration of children as young as babies on any social media platform in as little as one search term and two clicks,” the analyst said. “I think the public have this perception that this sort of material is hidden away in dark and dirty corners of the internet, but it’s not, it’s in plain sight.”
The ease of access is compounded by the fact that 16% of these commercial sites are disguised: they appear to host legal or inactive content when loaded directly on to a browser, but contain hidden pathways leading to illegal material. Beyond the commercial sector, the wider scale of online child sexual exploitation is staggering. The IWF previously reported that 92% of all CSAM it discovered in 2023 was “self-generated” – meaning children were groomed or coerced into recording and sharing the images themselves. In England and Wales, 51,672 online child sexual exploitation and abuse offences were recorded in 2024, a 26% rise on the previous year, while the National Crime Agency estimates that up to 840,000 individuals in the UK pose a sexual risk to children and that some 400,000 searches for online CSAM take place each month within the country.
How criminal gangs profit from exploitation
The business model behind these websites is increasingly sophisticated and lucrative. The IWF analyst described the revenue structure as operating “like a pyramid scheme” through affiliate links. “The video channel is profiting because of the traffic that’s going through. And then the person that’s posted the video will be profiting through all the clicks and the advertising through the affiliate schemes,” the analyst explained. The most common payment method for accessing the material is cryptocurrency, whose pseudonymous nature makes it harder for law enforcement to trace transactions and identify perpetrators. Money transfer services and card payments are also used.
Kerry Smith, chief executive of the IWF, said: “It is clear criminals are exploiting systemic failures and are finding it far too easy to reap huge profits from children’s sexual exploitation.” She called for mandatory measures on financial services to “proactively detect, take down and report digital payment links for the sale of images and videos of child sexual abuse”. Smith also warned about the growing use of end-to-end encryption on mainstream platforms, which she said can provide criminals with “safe havens”. “We need to see companies which use end-to-end encryption on their services adopt the tried and trusted safety tools which can prevent criminals using these platforms as safe havens to distribute child sexual abuse material,” she added.
An emerging and particularly disturbing threat is the rise of AI-generated CSAM. The IWF identified 3,443 such videos in 2025 – a more than 260-fold increase on the previous year. Alarmingly, 65% of these AI-generated videos were classified as Category A (the most severe, involving rape and penetration), compared with 43% of videos involving real children. The UK government is introducing new offences specifically targeting AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
Researchers also found instances of perpetrators attempting to determine victims’ locations so that they could expose them to other criminal users. The threat of sextortion – where criminals threaten to publish nude or sexual imagery unless demands are met – has escalated sharply. The Report Remove helpline, a free confidential service run by the IWF and the NSPCC, recorded 397 sextortion cases in 2025, a 127% increase on the previous year. Boys aged 14 to 17 accounted for 98% of these reports, and children as young as seven have self-reported being victims. Overall, the helpline received 1,894 reports in 2025, up 66% from 2024.
Calls for urgent action from regulators and tech firms
Chris Sherwood, chief executive of the NSPCC, said: “The growing number of commercial child sexual abuse sites uncovered by the Internet Watch Foundation lays bare a severe problem, with malicious criminal gangs profiting off children’s pain. We know young victims of sexual exploitation are often left defenceless and can face re-traumatisation knowing images of themselves continue to circulate online. This form of abuse demands urgent action.” Sherwood urged Ofcom, the regulator responsible for enforcing the Online Safety Act 2023, to use its powers to “spot and disrupt these perpetrators at the source, before they impact more young lives”. He also said tech companies should “utilise existing technology that prevents children from taking, sharing, or receiving nude images”.
The UK government has published a “Freedom from Violence and Abuse Strategy” (December 2025) and a “Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy” (2021), aiming for a comprehensive approach to combating online exploitation. Under the Online Safety Act, which came into force in 2023, social media platforms and search services have new duties to reduce the risk of illegal activity and remove illegal content. Ofcom is charged with enforcing these duties. Police and child protection experts have also called on technology companies to deploy artificial intelligence tools that can automatically detect and prevent indecent images from being uploaded and shared. Google, for its part, says it uses automated detection systems and specially trained reviewers to identify, remove and report CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States, and blocks search results linking to such material.
The IWF’s report also highlights the devastating demographic reality behind the statistics. In 2022, nearly six in ten instances of CSAM found by the IWF involved children aged 11 to 13, while over a third involved children aged 7 to 10. Although the vast majority (98%) of victims in imagery were girls, the number of images and videos depicting boys rose by 137% compared with 2021. For those affected, support remains available through the Report Remove helpline and Childline, which offer a way for young people under 18 to confidentially report sexual images and videos of themselves and have them removed from the internet.
