Pornography on the dark web is a big industry, with thousands of hidden sites selling everything from images of child abuse to snuff movies, which show people being murdered on camera.
A spokesman for the NCA’s CEOP command, which tackles child abuse, said: “The NCA hosts some of the UK’s most experienced and dedicated officers who are at the forefront of tackling the sexual exploitation of children online.
“We have a number of operations running to identify and bring to justice those who exploit children as well as running education programmes to help reduce the risk of children becoming victims.”
The spokesman said education programmes were “vital” in the fight against criminals hiding behind the anonymity of the internet to access images of child abuse.
He added: “There is no place for child abuse on the dark web.
“We urge anyone who comes across child abuse images to report it to CEOP so we can continue to tackle this problem and keep children safe.”
The issue runs deeper than this however. Cebolla Chan, the administrator of Lolita City, the largest hidden service in the world, says the majority of his users are not paedophiles.
“Lolita City has the most users and is the most popular because it’s been around for many years and has the best content,” he told the Dark Web Links Site.
“I am not a paedophile and I do not run this community to support the paedophiles. I am a regular user of this community and I like it for its freedom and anonymity.”
Lolita City has been operating for seven years, with Cebolla Chan saying it doesn’t matter how long the site has been running for.
“We have never shared CP [child pornography] or allowed CP, but we do not censor the content and we won’t give out our users to anyone,” he said.
“If you don’t like CP then don’t use the site, and if you don’t like what we do here then don’t look at our content. We are all adults here and we can do whatever we want as long as we don’t harm anyone.”
Cebolla Chan, who is not his real name, said he was unsure whether the closure of sites such as Lolita City would prevent users from accessing child pornography.
“Lots of users will move to other sites which are not as big and not as popular,” he said.
“The FBI cannot stop them because they are not in the US. They are wasting their time, they are not hurting us.”
Lolita City is still accessible, but visitors are greeted with a message from the administrator saying the site is “undergoing maintenance”.
The site says it is up and running again, but the Dark Web Links Site has been unable to access it.
