Analysis > Reported Suspicion and Hotline Determination
Reported Suspicion
Suspicion cited in reports
When a report is filed, the reporter’s suspicion, stated or implied, is recorded in the database. Upon the completion of the content assessment by the analyst, the analyst’s expert opinion is recorded in the database as the “Hotline Determination”.
In 2006, the suspicion given or implied by reporters in 2125 reports (79% of all reports submitted) was child pornography. Of these 2125 reports, the Hotline analysts determined that 423 (19.9 %) were indeed child pornography.
Suspicion cited in reports.
While the Hotline accepts reports of other illegal content, the top reason for the report submission remains child pornography. However, not only child pornography disturbs users. In 2006, 3% of the reports received by the Hotline were about financial scams whereas in 2005 they represented just over 1% of the reports. The most common complaint in both years was “phishing”.
The Hotline received 21 reports in 2006 in relation to adult pornographic material. This figure includes extreme adult content, where the Hotline Analysts often understand the reporters` concern. However, unless the material is illegal under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act, 1998 the legal situation is too unclear for action to be taken. To date, this material has been located outside the country and the Hotline is not in a position to take further action. Therefore this type of material is assessed as “not-illegal”.
There has been a greater increase in the level of other content which included mobile and WAP service queries, concerns about social networking sites or questions in general about Internet services. In total in 2006 the Hotline processed 315 reports (12%) in that respect, while in 2005 the level was only 5.3%.
Hotline determination of reported content
In 2006 there was no child pornography content found to be hosted in the Republic of Ireland as a result of any report received by the Hotline. This maintains the clean record enjoyed by Ireland since the Hotline was established over seven years ago.
This fact is corroborated by the 26 other member hotlines of the INHOPE network in operation around the World during 2006. They did not find that any of the illegal material reported to them was located in this country, otherwise they would have forwarded those reports to the ISPAI www.hotline.ie for action and this did not happen.
Comparison of Suspected to Determined Child Pornography Reports.
As can be seen from the graph below which shows both 2005 and 2006, in every month the number of confirmed reports of illegal content is a small percentage of overall reporting. This appears to be generally in proportion to the number of reports received in the month. Averaged over 2006, 15.8% of reports received was assessed as probably illegal child pornography, whereas the average for 2005 was marginally higher at 16.1% of all reports. These figures include duplicate reports.
It is worth mentioning the number of reports where the Hotline could not find the content to which the reporter was referring. Out of the 2677 reports in the period, 397 were classified as "not found". This would include situations where insufficient detail was provided by the reporter, or incorrect details were provided in the report such as an incorrect URL, or the content was already removed by the ISP, or the target of the report was inaccessible at the time of assessment due to DNS error or Web server being unavailable. In 2005 this figure was almost double with 663 reports being classified in this category. This suggests that reporters are providing more accurate reports. In addition it implies that people are reporting more promptly as the Hotline has observed that the greater delay there is in reporting the more likely it is that the content has already been removed. This could be due to two reasons: (1) the ISP has already taken it down or (2) the criminals themselves have moved the content to another location to avoid detection.
145 reports or 5% were outside the remit of the Hotline, such as complaints about telecommunications services or queries about services offered by ISPs. By comparison, 45 reports or 2% were outside the remit of the Hotline in 2005. The Hotline generally tries to redirect the reporter to the appropriate service where known, however it is under no obligation to do so.
