The INHOPE Chief Operating Officer Dushica Naumovska and Technical Product Manager Kalina Zografska took the audience on a journey through the most striking developments, insights, and data from the year 2021.


“The key point is having everyone connected so that we can remove Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) no matter where it is hosted.” – Dushica Naumovska, Chief Operating Officer.
Dushica started the webinar by elaborating on INHOPEs new strategic direction which emphasises a focus on collaboration. Going forward, our strategic focus will lie with people and technology: "If we work with people who are well equipped and knowledgeable on how to process this material in the best way, and if we provide them with the best technology, then we will be able to share data efficiently and remove CSAM from the internet as fast as possible." - Dushica Naumvoska, Chief Operating Officer

The power of collaboration

Our COO explained that while Covid-19 has created a lot of new challenges, it has also allowed us to develop more advanced methods of remote, international collaboration. With great support from INTERPOL and their criminal intelligence offices, INHOPE was able to create new modules, establish best practices and share more resources with our international team. "By using the best technology and working with the right people, we can combat CSAM online." - Dushica Naumovska, Chief Operating Officer.

The year in numbers

• 90 hotline analysts were trained by INHOPE with online training tools
• We grew to a network of 50 members.
• We welcomed 4 new hotlines in Mexico, Albania, Serbia, and Japan.
• INHOPE numerous Expert Insights webinars with a total of over 500 attendees.
  
  

ICCAM

Our Technical Product Manager, Kalina guided the audience through an overview of our platform ICCAM, which provides the data for all information shared in the Annual Report. We have internal processes in place with which we control that the data that we publish is valid and up to date. It is especially important to make sure that terminology and definitions of collected data are unified across all data collection points. "The Data Technology and Statistics User Task Group is responsible for agreeing to the main definitions of the base figures shared in the Annual Report, as well as the processing sources and rules for the data." - Kalina Zografska, Technical Product Manager

What is an orphan report?

After a hotline receives a report about material that is hosted within the same country it is forwarded to the local law enforcement as well as the hosting provider so that it can be removed immediately. All exchanged and saved content is additionally hashed and forwarded to INTERPOL. When we receive a report of CSAM which is hosted in a country without an established hotline, we call it an 'orphan report'. These reports can never be closed, which is why they have become a high priority for INHOPE. Since April 2021, we have established five designated hotlines that work to process these reports, which have been instrumental to our mission: "More than 20.000 content items have been historically closed and no new orphan items were created!" - Kalina Zografska, Technical Product Manager

ICCAM Insights

ICCAM is not only an information exchange tool, but helps us to export statistics and derive insights for our members:

• 82% of content URLs were unknown in 2021. This figure was 39% in 2020.
• 72% of all content URLs were removed from the internet within 3 days
• 92% of all illegal content URLs were reported to hosting providers within 3 days.
• 48% of all exchanged content in 2021 was illegal. This figure was 34% in 2020.

These are just some of the key facts and figures from our Annual Report. You can find more details in our Annual Report announcement.

Our vision for next year

Based on our experiences from the previous years, Kalina Zografska predicted a likely volume increase in reports: "We will continue to be proactive and stay ahead of the curve" - Kalina Zografska, Technical Product Manager. Being proactive also means continuing to establish a bigger network of collaborators in the fight against CSAM. Dushica explained that internal and stakeholder connections are key: "We will be bringing collective knowledge together to create something bigger " - Dushica Naumovska, Chief Operating Officer.


This recap provides only a brief overview of our Annual Report. To get a deeper insight and understanding of the work that has been done in the year 2021, read the full report here.