Twitter Users Uncover Child Abuse Accounts, Says NSPCC And CEOP

Twitter Users Help Shut Down Child Abuse Accounts

Several Twitter accounts which were publishing images of child abuse have been suspended following a barrage of complaints from users of the social networking site.

Around 30 complaints were made to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) about the indecent images on Sunday night.

Twitter users also contacted the NSPCC expressing their concern over the accounts, while the hashtags #report999tmmhot and #Reportloveinna47 - the Twitter handles of two of the accounts in question - started trending.

On Monday, the NSPCC congratulated those who had alerted CEOP about the offensive images.

A spokesman for the NSPCC said:| Sadly sex offenders will use any means available to share disturbing images. It's important to remember that children are abused when they are made and sharing them encourages this abuse. We also know that one in three people who view these images will go on to abuse children themselves.

"We are working with CEOP to catch the people responsible and will be speaking to Twitter and other social media platforms about what more can be done to stop the trade in these images."

It is not yet clear how many accounts were reported to CEOP but the internet safety team said all of the accounts had been suspended.

A spokesperson for CEOP said:

"These accounts have now been disabled by Twitter.

"Twitter are obliged by law to send details of any accounts containing indecent images of children to The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US.

"NCMEC will then forward information for investigation to law enforcement agencies in the relevant country where the user is believed to be based or children believed to be at risk."

Various hacking groups are claiming to have "unmasked" the Twitter users, according to the BBC, although the NSPCC could not confirm this.

The NSPCC added it would be "talking to Twitter" about the incident.

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