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    Our quality-assured hash data

    A hash is a type of digital fingerprint, or string value that identifies a picture of confirmed child sexual abuse.

    Each hash is completely unique. Once an image has been hashed, it can be recognised quickly. This means thousands of criminal pictures can be blocked from ever being uploaded to the internet in the first place.

    By the end of 2022, the IWF had hashed 1,663,106 individual images since 2016. In 2021 we launched our Taskforce following some funding we received from Thorn to do this work. You can read more about this and our partnership with the UK Government’s Child Abuse Image Database here.

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    Total unique hashes by severity and age.

    This chart details unique hashes of child sexual abuse split by age and severity (category). The majority of hashes in both categories A and B are of children aged 7-10 years old.

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    Total unique hashes by severity and sex.

    This chart shows the unique hashes of child sexual abuse split by severity (category) of abuse and sex of the child. Most of the hashed images across all severity categories depict girls.  

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    Total unique hashes according to the sexual activity depicted in the image.

    This chart provides more detail on the exact nature of the abuse seen in an image which has been hashed by our analysts using our bespoke software, IntelliGrade. You can read more about IntelliGrade here.