<p>
	Europe has become the global hotbed for hosting child abuse images amid fears predators are exploiting new website addresses to hide indecent material, according to research.</p>
<p>
	The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) found the continent now houses the majority (60pc) of the paedophilic web pages it detected online, leapfrogging North America in the last year.</p>
<p>
	The safety watchdog also found a sharp rise in the number of new website domains - using suffixes such as .ninja as opposed to .com - being tackled for posting abuse images, up 258pc (to 272 websites) since 2015.</p>
<p>
	Its findings come as campaigners warned websites on child-themed domains such as .kids face being sold without security preventing known paedophiles from hosting indecent content on them.</p>
<p>
	The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has created more than 1,000 domains since 2012, websites on which are now being sold off without in-built vetting procedures, a charity coalition said.</p>
<p>
	The Russian equivalent of .kids is already in use without child-protection safeguards, while Google and Amazon are among parties interested in the English domain, John Carr, secretary to the Children&#39;s Charities&#39; Coalition on Internet Safety (CHIS), said.</p>
<p>
	There has been no indication .kids has yet been exploited by paedophiles, but IWF chief executive Susie Hargreaves said: &quot;Criminals will attempt to abuse new technologies for their own gain - in this case it&#39;s using new domain names.&quot;</p>
<p>
	Its annual report found a total of 34,212 child abuse images were hosted in Europe in 2016, a rise of 19pc on the year before, overtaking North America, where 21,295 were hosted.</p>
<p>
	It also reported a rise in the number of domains used to host the 57,335 web addresses detected with abuse material - up 21pc to 2,416.</p>
<p>
	This included 92pc of such addresses found being focused in five countries: the Netherlands (37pc), US (22pc), Canada (15pc), France (11pc) and Russia (7pc).</p>
<p>
	&nbsp;</p>
<p>
	(Published by the Irish Independent on the 4th April 2017)</p>
<p>
	<a href="http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/europe-overtakes-the-us-as-hotbed-of-child-porn-images-35591591.html">http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/europe-overtakes-the-us-as-hotbed-of-child-porn-images-35591591.html</a></p>
