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The number of child pornography web pages identified by an industry watchdog more than doubled last year as online paedophilia became increasingly commercialised, a new report has disclosed.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said the number of web pages found with images of child sexual abuse increased to more than 31,000, compared with just over 13,000 in 2013.
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But in a highly disturbing trend, more than 3,700 of the sites were run as commercial operations, a 17 per cent rise on the previous 12 months.
Paedophiles are increasingly using the digital currency ‘bitcoin’ - in which transactions are encrypted and therefore almost impossible to trace – to buy images of children being raped and abused.
The illegal images are also being hosted on “disguised” websites which appear on the surface to offer legal adult pornography but actually contain secret, illegal content when they are accessed in a certain way.
Other criminals are using “cyberlockers”, or online file hosting services, to share illegal material which paedophiles can access through premium rate services.
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“There is an emerging trend towards new forms of commercial methods for distributing child sexual abuse material,” said the IWF’s annual report.
“This includes using disguised websites or the use of alternative payment mechanisms such as bitcoin.
“We have also seen a shift by those distributing the criminal content towards abusing pay-for-premium services offered by legitimate cyberlocker services.
“The content being made available in this way was previously available on a non-commercial basis.
“However, by abusing pay-for-premium services, the uploader receives a payment each time a file is downloaded.”
It added: “We have been tracking a cluster of commercial websites which display child sexual abuse images only when accessed via a predetermined ‘digital pathway’.
“These ‘disguised’ websites when loaded directly into the browser display legitimate adult content.
“However, when accessed via a link on a particular gateway site, the page displays child sexual abuse content.
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“We continue to see this technique being used to distribute child sexual abuse material and also provide direct access to the most prolific commercial child sexual abuse websites.”
The IWF has developed ways to circumvent the websites’ disguises and identify which are hosting child pornography.
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In all, 95 British-based web pages were removed in 2014 because they were hosting child sexual abuse images and videos, the IWF said.
Around 89 per cent of the British sites contained images of children aged 10 or under, an increase from 65 per cent in 2013, the watchdog added.
Susie Hargreaves, IWF chief executive, said the online industry was stepping up efforts to tackle child sexual abuse images, but many companies did not recognise they had a problem or were too slow to respond.
"It is not good enough for those companies to allow the burden of responsibility to fall on a socially responsible few," she said.
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"This year will ensure they have nowhere to hide as we will be targeting them for the benefit of all internet users and victims of sexual abuse."
The IWF, which was launched in 1996, is funded by 117 companies and organisations including technology giants Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter.
A significant factor in the overall increase in web pages identified by the IWF was its growing programme of in-house work to proactively search for child sex abuse images, rather than relying solely on reports from the public.
The report said cyberlockers - including online file hosting services, cloud storage services and online file storage providers - saw 5,582 web pages removed last year because they were hosting child sex abuse images compared with 1,400 in 2013.
A number of the most prolific commercial child sexual abuse websites started accepting bitcoin as payment for images last year, the annual report went on.
It found 37 websites selling child pornography for bitcoins between January and April last year.
The IWF said it was working with several of the world's largest bitcoin exchanges to share intelligence and develop strategies to prevent the currency’s use.
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