Criminal gangs blackmailing schools with deepfake child sex abuse images at ‘shocking’ scale, experts say Source: The Independent

 

A report in the Independent News Paper describes another new attack on children in our schools by producing sexualised images of children from the schools and using them to extort ransom payments to prevent the images from being published online.

The report goes on to suggest that this is not occasional instances  of these attacks but a growing wave of them. Nearly half of headteachers have reported pupil images being used as part of harmful acts including extortion or blackmail threats, and more that half of them reported concerns about images on the school website could be used as a source for the original images.

Criminals will always seek an alternative to their initial tactics and now that such things are being tightened up by UK laws this seems to be an alternative way to keep up their criminal activities.

Read the full story here. 

 

New guidance for parents and carers as AI-manipulated images of children become a growing concern Source: National Crime Agency

 

UK's National Crime Agency issued guidance for parents and carers to alert them to the growing threat of children's images shared online being manipulated into AI generated sexual abuse material. 

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the National Crime Agency (NCA) have seen an increase in online offenders exploiting openly available images of children to create realistic sexualised content.

IWF analysts found 3,440 AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse in 2025, compared to just 13 in 2024, and the NCA have increasingly seen offenders exploiting AI technologies to target children in new ways.

 The use of AI to manipulate images posted online and turn these against the targets is not something that is easy to block or taken down, particularly when direct communications are used to make contact.

Chief Executive of the Internet watch Foundation stated that "The threat is disturbing. If someone's imagery is online, they could be easy pickings for criminals and anyone, especially children, could find themselves being targeted."

Read the guidance here. 

Police Cyber team recently secured its first Stalking Prevention Order involving a juvenile Source: Bedfordshire Police

 

 

Bedforshire Police have reported that they secured their first Stalking Prevention Order involving a teenage boy. 

The boy (unnamed) had created multiple social media accounts using the names of three girls from the same school. He then took images from the victims’ personal social media profiles and used AI technology to manipulate them into explicit images and published them online.

 

This sort of behaviour is a growing concern and in this case it isn't the sort of activity that Tech companies could easily monitor. In this case monitoring the boys device's might well have prevented him having to be subject to police investigation and sanction. Hopefully it is a lesson learnt.

 

Read the full posting here. (Facebook Account not required) 

 

 

 

Children being 'failed by tech companies' amid rise in online sex abuse images Source: ITVX

 

Efforts to protect children from some of the worst aspects of online abuse and dangerous online content has made some progress through legislation passed by the UK government last year.  

Even so, reports continue to appear about the continued rise on child sex abuse image crimes logged by police forces in the UK. Such reports have risen by nearly 10% in the past year, the children's charity NSPCC has said.

The NSPCC said that of the 10,811 crimes where police forces recorded which social media platforms perpetrators used in relation to child sex abuse image crimes, 43%, or a total of 4,615, took place on Snapchat.

Meanwhile, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp accounted for almost a quarter of all offences (24%), the charity said. 

In other reports is is clear that the restrictions on access to video pornography, through such approaches as age verification  are still not totally effective. Many of the lesser known porography sites have not implimented age verification and these are not being blocked by  service providers.

Read the full story here.  

 

Story:Two men jailed for horrific online sexual exploitation of children in legal first as CPS tackles Violence Against Women and Girls Source: Crown Prosecution Service

 

 

This report from the Crown Prosecution Service referrs to the case involving two girls as young as 16, who made complaints to separate police forces across the UK. It demonstrates the growing complexity of technology-facilitated child sexual abuse and exploitation.

The abuse took place  through online chat rooms, as they exploited and preyed upon young girls from different parts of the UK.  The shared illegal indecent images of them and encouraging them to commit acts of self-harm. 

The chair of The Cyber Trust was asked for his opinion and said, “This case underlines the need for comprehensive Cyber Security advice and education in particular for vulnerable young people and their parents so that they all may access online information safely and appropriately.  In this case, we can see the dangers of online chat rooms through exploitation by people that try and get in contact with users of such spaces for criminal purposes.”

The Cyber Trust's Family Internet Monitoring Project may become part of the solution to this sort of crime by ensureing that parents are aware of their children's involvement with people online and can intervene to protect them when required.

Read the full report here. 

 

 

Story:Charities Warn Against Loopholes in UK Online Safety Act Regarding Child Protection Source: London Daily

 

A number of child protection agencies and charities including NSPCC and Barnardo’s highlighted what they describe as an 'unacceptable loophole' that could allow encrypted messaging services to evade responsibility for removing illegal content. 

The loophole arises from the fact that person to person messaging is not fully covered by the legislation and the charities are raising their concerns about the dangers of encypted person to person messaging.

Putting controls in place for this sort of communications will be challenging and only time will tell how this and other encrypted technology might be controlled.

Read the full story here.