In the fight against child sex abuse, the Internet giants of this world have joined hands, this time using their full firepower. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo! are stepping up the fight against paedophiles, with a new system that automatically blocks images of child sexual abuse.
The companies have started using a database of thousands of known child sex abuse images, known as a “hash list.” Compiled by Britain-based charity – Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), this list will help identify and block these images.
The technology used to track and delete these terrible images may fox you a little, but here’s a description of how it works, in…ahem…the easiest language possible.
Just like the way each of our finger prints are unique, the technology used by these companies will also assign a unique “digital fingerprint” (also known as a hash value) to each of these images.
This is basically a unique code created by running the image through an algorithm. Any copies of the file that are made will produce the same hash value when analysed.
So if any creep tries to share the image on Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter or Yahoo, these companies will automatically detect the hash value and block the image (Thank heavens!)
This technology was developed by Google, and is now being shared with the wider industry. A similar system is already used by Dropbox, Google and other companies to prevent users from sharing copyright-protected files with other users.
“It means victims’ images can be identified and removed more quickly, and we can prevent known child sexual abuse images from being uploaded to the Internet in the first place,” said Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the Internet Watch Foundation in an interview with The Telegraph.
The techies in our friends list tell us that this may actually work better than the last time when Google and Microsoft tried to deal with images of child sex abuse. They tweaked their search algorithms to make it harder for people to find child abuse images online.
But this measure was slammed then by critics because anybody with half a brain will never use a legit search engine like Google to look for child sex abuse images. Critics termed that move as ‘all hype’.
This new technology developed by Google to assign digital fingerprints is a much better scheme. Still experts, however, warn that this measure cannot be a one-time permanent solution to stopping this offense. The Internet, after all, was designed to provide adaptable routing, and makes even well-intentioned censorship difficult.
Nevertheless, we still hope that this technical solution will go a long way in drastically reducing instances of images of child sex abuse being uploaded.
Image Courtesy: BCCL
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