GoFibre joins Internet Watch Foundation to address online safety

Scottish independent broadband provider, GoFibre has signed up to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to help make the internet a safer space for its customers, staff and their families.

The IWF, an online child protection charity, works to stop the repeated traumatisation of child sexual abuse victims by identifying and removing online child sexual abuse imagery all round the globe.

Between 2020 and 2022, they found that the most extreme type of child sexual abuse imagery doubled and believe this to be partly down to an increase in criminal sites selling videos and images.

As a socially-responsible member of the IWF, GoFibre can access the organisation’s comprehensive list of webpages containing confirmed images and videos of child sexual abuse. Now, when a GoFibre customer or staff member attempts to access any of those recognised sites and pages, a pop-up will appear alerting them and access will be denied at a network level.

Neil Conaghan, Chief Executive at GoFibre, said: “As a builder and provider of broadband services, we have a duty to our customers and their families to keep them safe and so addressing this issue is vital as it only becomes more prevalent and devastating.

“The IWF’s analysts do a fantastic job of addressing online safety head-on and we very much share their vision to put an end to this type of imagery online.”

IWF CEO, Susie Hargreaves OBE, said: “Survivors of child sexual abuse need to know that there are people fighting for them, and fighting to prevent the imagery of their horrific abuse from continually being shared and sold online. Removal of this criminal content is at the core of our mission at the IWF and the work that we do with the tech community helps us to fulfil that mission.

“We applaud GoFibre’s decision to partner with the IWF and use our rigorously checked and constantly updated data sets to protect children and others on the internet.”

GoFibre’s broadband network is helping to tackle the digital divide across Scotland and the north of England. Once in place, speeds of up to 10Gbps are available, transforming the ability for communities to work and play effectively from home, operate multiple devices simultaneously with no lag and download complete box sets and large files in just seconds.

Households and businesses can register their interest in GoFibre’s full fibre broadband services by visiting  www.gofibre.co.uk/register.