One million pounds to stop people viewing sexual images and videos of children online
2PS project is honoured to share the great news about the Lucy Faithfull Foundation Intercept Project– member of 2PS Advisory Board. They have been awarded nearly one million pounds by the Nominet to stop people viewing sexual images and videos of children online.
This initiative will tackle the growing crime of online CSA by disrupting and deterring people from offending, driving them towards confidential help to change their behaviour.
The Intercept project: goals and actions
The Lucy Faithfull Foundation have already pioneered the use of warning messages presented to people who are searching for sexual images of children online.
These warnings clearly state that such behaviour is illegal and causes harm to children.
The messages also point towards the Stop It Now! helpline, for support to stop.
The funding provides an opportunity to further build on this experience to design impactful approaches that deter potential perpetrators of abuse.
In particular, the project is composed of three aspects:
1. Experimentation, which includes the development of an evidence-based methodology for testing various warnings in different online spaces. The project will run a series of experimentation cycles to design, test, collect and analyse data and iterate warnings. Additionally, it will gather insights as to which warnings are most effective in different online spaces.
2. Innovation, which foresees a mapping of risky online spaces, offender pathways and identification of points to engage internet users. It includes also the development of new approaches in online spaces that do not currently deploy warnings. Finally, Intercept will run a series of experimentation cycles to design, test, collect and analyse data.
3. Scaling by building of partnerships across the technology industry to deploy warnings and other approaches in more online spaces. The consortium will design a blueprint for the tech industry for the use of warnings in tackling online child sexual abuse.
Intercept team
This programme will work in partnership with technology companies, researchers and LEAs to test the effectiveness of the warning messages.
The Consortium will include the Policing Institute for the Eastern Region (PIER), University of Tasmania (UTAS), Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), and LEAs.
For more information, visit https://www.stopitnow.org.uk/home/media-centre/news/project-intercept/
