70 Million Online Warnings Direct Users Toward Help, Not Abuse

More than 70 million warning messages were sent to people attempting to access child sexual abuse material online over the past two years, but the central question is whether those alerts change behavior or simply document demand.

The messages were delivered through Project Intercept, a partnership led by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation with technology firms including Google, TikTok and Meta. Instead of only blocking access, the warnings tell users the material is illegal, explain that it harms children, and point them to confidential support through Stop It Now, the charity’s helpline and online resources. The foundation says the approach is meant to disrupt offending before abuse is committed, not after a case reaches police.

That prevention strategy is being tested at scale. Nearly 700,000 people went on to access Stop It Now resources after seeing the warnings, a fraction of the total number of alerts sent. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has described Project Intercept as a first-of-its-kind initiative, funded by Nominet with £930,000 over three years, or about £1 million overall, to use behavioural science and technology partnerships to improve warning messages across the internet.

The modest conversion rate matters because the stakes are high. Child sexual abuse imagery retraumatizes victims every time it is viewed or shared, and the internet has made searching for, distributing and creating the material easier to do at scale. Child-safety organisations, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, have reported large and rising volumes of online child sexual exploitation material, underscoring the pressure on prevention tools that can reach offenders before harm deepens.

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation says Stop It Now has run since 2002 and has provided confidential support to more than 79,000 people. The charity says its wider aim is to stop child sexual abuse before it happens, and the project’s next test will be whether warning messages can do more than redirect users in the moment. For law enforcement, that matters too: the foundation says police are dealing with more than 900 people per month alleged to have committed an online child sexual abuse offence, a reminder that detection alone is not enough if prevention fails to bite.