Reporting child sexual abuse material found on Reddit (NCMEC CyberTipline, IWF)

If you think you have seen sexual images or video of a child on Reddit, the single most important rule is to report where it is, not what it is. Copy the web address of the post or comment, write down the subreddit and the username, and stop there. Do not download the file, take a screenshot, forward the link to friends, post about it, or send it to a journalist. Even well-meant copies spread the harm to the child and can put you at legal risk.

The law treats the material itself as the problem. In the United States, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A makes it an offence for a person to knowingly possess, or knowingly access with intent to view, “any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornography”, and separate paragraphs cover distributing it. In England and Wales, section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978 makes it an offence to take or make, distribute or show indecent photographs of a child, and section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes it an offence to have such a photograph in your possession, subject to statutory defences. This guide does not tell you whether any defence would apply to you. Laws differ by country, so the safest course everywhere is not to create or keep a copy at all.

The reporting services say the same thing in their own way. NCMEC’s Take It Down service tells users: “Please do NOT send, share, or download any image or video in order to submit to Take It Down.” NCMEC’s CyberTipline FAQ, answering someone who says they have screenshots, says you cannot attach them to the report but that it is important to make a note in the report that you have them, and that NCMEC may contact you. That answer is for people who already hold screenshots; it is not a suggestion to take any. Do not make screenshots or copies. If you are in the UK and already have an image, do not keep it, show it or send it on to anyone: tell the police or the IWF that you have it and follow their instructions. The IWF’s FAQ, written for people who come across such images by chance, says: “You should then delete any images or URLs (web address links) from your device(s) as soon as you have reported them.” It also says not to re-visit the page to see whether it has been removed, because you “may be unintentionally breaking the law”. If you have already seen something upsetting by accident, NCMEC’s FAQ points to its own guidance and a support email address; looking after yourself is a reasonable thing to do before or after you report.

Start by reporting the content to Reddit so it can be taken down and the account dealt with. Rule 4 of the Reddit Rules says: “Do not share or encourage the sharing of sexual, abusive, or suggestive content involving minors. Any predatory or inappropriate behavior involving a minor is also strictly prohibited.” Reddit’s own help article says it has a process for the community to report possible CSAM, sexualization or exploitation of minors, and that it has forms both for logged-in users and for people without a Reddit account.

Reddit’s transparency report for July to December 2024 says that when it finds child sexual abuse material it is “removed immediately and the offending user is permanently suspended from Reddit”, and that Reddit also takes “the steps required by U.S. law to report the relevant users/content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)”. That is Reddit’s description of its own practice; it is not something you can enforce, and reporting to Reddit does not replace reporting to a hotline.

The CyberTipline, run by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), is the US centralised reporting system for online child sexual exploitation. NCMEC describes it as a place where the public and electronic service providers can report suspected online enticement of children for sexual acts, child sexual abuse material, child sex trafficking and related harms. The online report form is at report.cybertip.org. NCMEC also runs a call centre on 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678), which it says is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you can call it with questions before you file a report.

You do not have to give your name or contact details, and many fields in the form are optional. NCMEC’s FAQ also says you do not have to live in the United States to make a report, and that if possible you should say where the incident happened and where you are, so the report reaches the right law enforcement agency. NCMEC says its staff review each report, try to identify a location, and make the report available to law enforcement; where no local jurisdiction can be found, it is made available to federal law enforcement.

After you submit, you get a report number. NCMEC’s FAQ says you can phone with that number to add information. Tips: write down the URL, subreddit, username, date and time (with time zone) before you start, because unfinished reports are not saved.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a UK charity that runs a hotline for reports of suspected online child sexual abuse imagery. Its report page says reporting is “quick, easy and anonymous”, that providing contact details is optional, and that if you leave an email address it may contact you if more information is needed. It accepts reports of child sexual abuse pictures or videos on the internet, and of AI, animation, cartoon or drawn child sexual abuse images. It does not accept other kinds of report.

The IWF says each report is manually assessed by trained analysts against UK legal guidelines, and that it traces where the content is hosted. How it then acts depends on where that is. For content hosted in the US it says it has a memorandum of understanding with NCMEC that lets it send alerts directly to the hosting company at the same time as it notifies NCMEC. Separately, Reddit’s own help article says Reddit is partnered with the IWF.

Grooming and threats are outside the IWF’s remit. For worries that a child is being groomed or coerced into sexual acts, the IWF points to the CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection command) reporting page or your local police station. The CEOP Safety Centre says it is a command of the National Crime Agency, and invites reports from anyone worried about online sexual abuse or the way someone has been communicating with a child online.

If a nude, partly nude or sexual image or video of you from before you turned 18 has been, or may be, shared, there are two services, and they work differently. NCMEC’s Take It Down says you can stay anonymous and do not have to “send your images or videos to anyone”. It creates a hash (a digital fingerprint) of the image on your own device. Only the hash goes to NCMEC; the image never leaves your device. Participating public or unencrypted platforms can use the hash list to detect and remove matching copies. NCMEC says online platforms may have limited ability to remove content already posted in the past, and suggests also making a CyberTipline report for further help. If the image is from when you were 18 or older, Take It Down points to stopncii.org instead.

In the UK, Report Remove is a joint service from Childline and the IWF for people under 18 who want sexual images or videos of themselves removed. It is not a send-nothing service. Childline’s Report Remove page says: “The only information you will give to the IWF are the images, videos or URLs you report.” The IWF page says the service is free and confidential. The steps are to choose an age range, create a Childline account, report the image or video to the IWF, and check your Childline locker a few days later for updates. Childline’s page also says that “Nude images and videos that IWF decide are illegal may be kept by the IWF for up to 2 years”, because of an agreement with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Illegal images are given a hash that is shared with technology companies so they can look for the image and take it down, and “The image and the hash are shared with the police who store it on their Child Abuse Image Database.” Images the IWF decides are not illegal “may be kept for a maximum of 6 months for quality checking and any follow up questions” and are then deleted. Childline says that most of the time nobody will know you have made a report, but that if the police already have the image or video they might investigate, and only the police can decide whether to tell someone else. It says Childline itself never sees what you report to the IWF. Childline’s page also says the IWF can remove images that are public, but not those on encrypted networks such as WhatsApp or saved on someone’s device, and that faked images, including AI-made ones, can be reported too. This route is built for the young person pictured. If you found someone else’s image, report only the URL, as described above.

If you are being threatened over images, Take It Down links to a resources page for reporting anyone who is threatening you, NCMEC describes a Team HOPE programme that connects families with others who have been through the same thing, and in the UK Report Remove offers the chance to talk to a Childline counsellor.

In the United States, electronic service providers have a statutory duty to report. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(a)(1)(A) a provider “shall, as soon as reasonably possible after obtaining actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2)(A), take the actions described in subparagraph (B)”, and those actions include “making a report of such facts or circumstances to the CyberTipline”. The same section also says nothing in it requires a provider to “affirmatively search, screen, or scan for facts or circumstances described in sections (a) and (b)”. Reddit’s help article lists community reports alongside automated tools and human review as the ways it detects this kind of content, so reports from users are one route by which a provider comes to know.

Reddit’s help article says that in the United States, federal law requires US-based electronic service providers such as Reddit to report apparent CSAM to NCMEC. The statute also says NCMEC makes each provider report available to law enforcement agencies. None of this gives you a legal claim: the duty runs to the CyberTipline, not to you.

If a child is in immediate danger, call the police: 999 in the UK, 911 in the US, or your own country’s emergency number. The NCMEC and IWF pages both say this. Do not wait for a hotline to respond.

Sextortion means threatening to share someone’s images unless they send more images or money. This guide does not try to give safety advice for it. It can point you to the services that do: in the US, NCMEC lists sextortion among the issues it covers and the CyberTipline accepts reports of online enticement; in the UK, CEOP takes reports from anyone worried about online sexual abuse or the way someone has been communicating online, and the IWF website lists a Sextortion Help resource. Whatever you do, do not screenshot, download, save, copy or forward sexual images of anyone under 18, including images of yourself, and do not send them on to friends or other people. If you need a record, keep only the text of the messages, the usernames, the web addresses and the dates and times. For young people being blackmailed, NCMEC’s sextortion page advises reporting the account through the platform’s safety feature and blocking the suspect, but says “DO NOT DELETE your profile or messages”, and says that cooperating or paying rarely stops the blackmail. This guide is general information and does not replace advice from the police or a child-protection service.