INHOPE’s 2024 Report Highlights Safnet.bg’s Contribution to SCAM Detection and Reporting

The International Network of Hotlines for Reporting Illegal Online Content with Children INHOPE published its annual report for 2024 a few days ago. The document reveals unprecedented challenges in the fight against sexual abuse and exploitation of children in the digital environment and for the first time pays special attention to the contribution of the Bulgarian National Safer Internet Center in the detection and reporting of illegal content.

Over the past year, the work of the Hotlines identified and redirected nearly 2.5 million online records (photos and videos) of child sexual abuse (CSAM). This is an increase of 218% compared to 2023, when the reported records were 785,322. The sharp increase in reported content is largely due to the contribution of the Bulgarian SafeNet Center, the Report emphasizes, indicating that 1.6 million out of a total of 2.5 million records were detected and reported by the Bulgarian center.

A significant part of this content originates from a cluster of several well-known platforms and abusive sites, where links to a large volume of child sexual abuse content are uploaded. Several key factors have been identified for this jump. According to INHOPE, these are: the better organization of the perpetrators and the concentration of their activities on several large platforms. However, the latter has also made it possible to simultaneously detect a large volume of illegal content. The authors of the annual analysis also note the technological improvements and optimizations in the workflow introduced by the Bulgarian center, which have contributed to SafeNet’s great contribution to detecting illegal content over the past year. The same was emphasized in February by INHOPE President Robert Hoving in his video address on the occasion of 20 years since the start of the work of the National Safer Internet Center in our country.

According to INHOPE, 2024 was one of the most challenging years in the history of the international network, which has been uniting the efforts of dozens of countries around the world for 20 years. Of all reports submitted to the Hotlines:

65% were classified as illegal (a 202% increase from the previous year).
37% of the recordings contained new content that required assessment by analysts.
93% of the victims were children between 3 and 13 years old.
99% of the victims were young girls.
CSAM was detected in 86 countries worldwide in 2024, up from 84 in 2023.
The majority of the content was detected in the Netherlands (59.09%), followed by the US with 12.59% and Slovakia with 3.96%, with Bulgaria in fourth place with 3.2%.
In 2025, the organization wants to focus on strengthening core operations, improving the ICCAM platform and deepening cooperation across all sectors. The report calls for greater private sector engagement and emphasizes that combating CSAM is a shared responsibility, requiring the commitment of stakeholders across the digital landscape, including public and private organizations, institutions, platforms and social networks, mobile operators, and society at large.
The Bulgarian Family Planning and Sexual Health Association (BFPA), the National Network for Children (NNC) and the Parents Association support the work of the National Safer Internet Center in a consortium.