Half the photos on some paedophile sites are pictures parents have innocently shared online of their children at the beach or doing gymnastics
- Photos found on paedophile websites uncovered by eSafety investigators
- Many photos are posted on Facebook and Instagram by children's parents
- Some found on paedophile sites are saved in folders titled 'kids at beach'
- More than 5,000 URLs of child abuse material were investigated last year
Half the material found on some paedophile image-sharing websites are just innocent photos of children doing everyday activities that have been shared on social media by their parents.
Australia's Children's eSafety Commissioner Alastair MacGibbon said millions of photos of children posted on Facebook, Kik and Instagram were found by investigators looking for child abuse material, Fairfax Media reports.
Many of the innocent photos were posted by their parents and found in folders on image-sharing websites under 'kids at beach', 'nice boys play in river' and 'gymnasts'.
Half the material found on some paedophile image-sharing websites are just innocent photos of children doing everyday activities - like going to the beach - that have been shared on social media by their parents
'Many users clearly identify that they have obtained the content through trawling social media accounts,' Mr MacGibbon said.
'The images are almost always accompanied by highly explicit and very disturbing user comments. Often, users exchange email addresses with invitations to connect outside the site to trade content.'
Recent figures from the Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner eSafety Hotline show more than 5,000 URLs of child sexual abuse material were investigated in the last financial year.
Australia's Children's eSafety Commissioner Alastair MacGibbon said millions of photos of children posted on Facebook, Kik and Instagram were found by investigators looking for child abuse material
Many of the innocent photos were posted by their parents and found in folders on image-sharing websites under 'kids at beach', 'nice boys play in river' and 'gymnasts'
All of the content was found to be hosted outside of Australia.
The investigated material resulted in the removal of images depicting more than 25,000 children.
'Each image that gets taken down means one less child is re-victimised by the image being viewed and shared,' Mr MacGibbon said.
About 91 percent of the content investigated by the eSafety Hotline was removed in less than three days in partnership with Australian law enforcement and the international network of Internet Hotlines.
Some users had trawled social media to find photos of children and saved them in folders titled 'nice boys play in river' and 'gymnasts'
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