New Research Exposes How Offenders Search for and Share CSAM Online

To address a critical gap in understanding how active offenders search for and share CSAM, Ofcom partnered with Protect Children on an unprecedented anonymous survey of individuals who used the dark web to find this material. The findings offer rare insight into offender behavior and technology use — but they represent only one part of the problem.

This research does not capture the vast number of individuals who encounter or access CSAM on the open web through Google searches, mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, or through apps such as Snapchat. The scale of harm on the “surface web” remains significantly under‑measured.

In today’s digital environment, it is crucial not to jump to conclusions about the many young people being placed on sex‑offender registries for possession of CSAM. A significant portion may have been exposed to illegal material long before they understood what they were seeing, or before they had the developmental maturity to process it. Some may have encountered CSAM through algorithmic pathways, peer‑to‑peer sharing, or accidental exposure — not through deliberate predatory behavior.