Blocking Good Practice

The IWF and its Members promote policies and practices in order to adhere to the principles of self-regulation and transparency. Blocking access to child sexual abuse content by our Members is carried out on a voluntary basis and is a short-term disruption tactic which works alongside the removal of content at source whilst police investigators collect the evidence they require to investigate offenders or identify and rescue the victims from sexual abuse.

Whilst the IWF facilitates this blocking initiative through the provision of a URL list and does not stipulate which blocking method is used, we do provide good practice guidance regarding the way in which blocking is conducted. These recommendations are designed to maintain the principle of transparency and minimise over-blocking and latency issues:

Blocking should be carried out on a URL-specific basis and not at domain level
We oblige those taking the list to regularly test and certify whether their blocking solution is effective at preventing access to content
We recommend the use of a specific splash page when users’ requests for web pages on the list are denied*
We subject the process of URL inclusion on the list to independent inspection
We provide a robust complaints process allowing anyone to appeal against the inclusion of a URL on the list

*403: Access Denied

Access has been denied by your internet access provider because this page may contain indecent images of children as identified by the Internet Watch Foundation. If you think this page has been blocked in error please contact <your service provider>.

Please note that the IWF list only contains web pages with child sexual abuse content hosted outside the UK and is updated twice a day to ensure all URLs are live and relevant.

For more information on the blocking initiative see: http://www.iwf.org.uk/services/blocking

For details of the blocking testing policy see: http://www.iwf.org.uk/services/blocking/testing-policy

For the content assessment appeal process see: http://www.iwf.org.uk/accountability/complaints/content-assessment-appeal-process

For a list of IWF list recipients see: http://www.iwf.org.uk/services/blocking/iwf-list-recipients