Report illegal online contenteco Complaints Office: 2023 report published

The Complaints Office of the German Internet Industry Association eco presented its report for the past year on April 9, 2024. With 17,493 justified cases, the report records a new high in reported legal violations on the internet. The infringements reported by eco were deleted in over 98% of cases worldwide.

Sexual violence and boundary violations against children and adolescents continued to account for the majority (91%) of complaints received

Reports of sexual violence and sexual boundary violations against children and adolescents also made up the largest proportion of complaints received in 2023  A total of 60,151 reports concerned this subject area. These included a particularly large amount of content that qualified as child pornography within the meaning of Section 184b StGB.

Depictions of the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children, which are considered child pornography within the meaning of Section 184b St GB, also accounted for the majority of justified complaints in 2023 (16,573 cases).

"The increase in complaints, especially in the area of sexual violence and border violations against minors, is shocking, but it also shows that our society is vigilant and takes a clear stance against illegal content," says Alexandra Koch-Skiba, Head of the Complaints Office.

Depictions of abuse could be deleted in over 98 percent of cases worldwide

In close cooperation with its network partners, the eco Complaints Office was able to achieve important successes in 2023: Websites hosted in Germany that contained depictions of sexual abuse were deleted 100 percent of the time. Theaverage time required for this wasaround 1.86 days for . Worldwide, such content was removed in around 6 days and with an overall success rate of 98.35%. This means that availability timesfell in 2023 compared to the previous year . This underlines how important the work of the complaints bodies is. And that the principle of "deleting instead of blocking" continues to work very well.

Important bridging function of the complaints offices through anonymous reporting options for citizens

2023 has once again shown how important it is that illegal content can also be reported anonymously to the eco Complaints Office: Last year, the eco Complaints Office received a total of65,998 complaints about potentially criminal or youth media protection-relevant internet content. Almost two thirds (63.26%) of the complainants reported this information anonymously.

Report illegal content

Report illegal online content to the hotlines of the German Safer Internet Association and actively contribute to its deletion and prosecution: