In one of many largest coordinated legislation enforcement operations, authorities have dismantled Kidflix, a streaming platform that provided little one sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
“A complete of 1.8 million customers worldwide logged on to the platform between April 2022 and March 2025,” Europol said in a press release. “On March 11, 2025, the server, which contained round 72,000 movies on the time, was seized by German and Dutch authorities.”
The European legislation enforcement company described it as the biggest operation undertaken to fight little one sexual exploitation. It has been codenamed Operation Stream.
The multi-year probe, which commenced in 2022 and concerned 38 international locations internationally, noticed 1,393 recognized globally by way of an evaluation of fee transactions, with 79 of them arrested so far for distributing CSAM. Among the apprehended people have additionally been accused of not solely importing and watching such content material but additionally abused youngsters.
As well as, greater than 3,000 digital units have been seized. The investigation stays ongoing.
Based on Europol, Kidflix launched in 2021 and amassed a catalog of 91,000 distinctive movies over time. Roughly 3.5 new movies have been uploaded to the platform each hour on common.
The platform, which had about 190,000 registered customers since April 2022 and till its shutdown, provided the flexibility to each obtain and stream the content material after customers made funds utilizing cryptocurrencies, which have been then transformed into tokens.
“By importing CSAM, verifying video titles and descriptions and assigning classes to movies, offenders might earn tokens, which have been then used to view content material,” Europol stated.
“Every video was uploaded in a number of variations – low, medium and top quality – permitting criminals to preview the content material and pay a price to unlock increased high quality variations.”
That stated, the recognized offenders symbolize solely a fraction of the 1.8 million customers who’re suspected to have logged on to the platform between April 2022 and March of this yr. Per Dutch police officials, 13 suspects have been recognized within the Netherlands, though no arrests have been made up to now.
Collaborating international locations included Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Eire, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and america.
“The digital dimension has pushed a fast evolution in on-line little one sexual exploitation, providing offenders a borderless platform to contact and groom victims, in addition to to create, retailer, and change little one sexual abuse materials,” stated Catherine De Bolle, Europol Govt Director.”
“Some try to border this as merely a technical or cyber challenge – however it’s not. There are actual victims behind these crimes, and people victims are youngsters.”
The event comes because the European Fee unveiled a brand new inner safety technique known as ProtectEU to higher detect cyber threats, combat severe and arranged crimes, and share intelligence throughout the area.
As a part of the initiative, the Fee is anticipated to “current a Know-how Roadmap on encryption to establish and assess technological options to allow lawful entry to information by legislation enforcement authorities in 2026.”
The thought, it added, is to “establish and assess technological options that may allow legislation enforcement authorities to entry encrypted information in a lawful method, safeguarding cybersecurity and elementary rights.”
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