Microsoft And Facebook Partner To Combat Child Exploitation

Microsoft today announced the significant partnership between Facebook, NCMEC. Facebook is joining Microsoft in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s PhotoDNA program to combat child pornography. Using image-matching technology called PhotoDNA created by Microsoft Research in collaboration with Dartmouth College, gives online service providers like Facebook, Flickr, Microsoft’s Bing, Skydrive,etc, an effective tool to take more proactive action to stop the distribution of known images of child sexual abuse online.

In partnership with NCMEC, Dartmouth College, Microsoft Research, Windows Live, Bing and many others, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit has long worked to advance innovations and strong partnerships to combat child exploitation. In 2009, Microsoft, working with digital imaging expert Dr. Hany Farid of Dartmouth College, developed PhotoDNA and freely licensed it to NCMEC for use in a program to disrupt the online distribution of the worst known images of child pornography known to NCMEC.

I encourage everyone reading this to do their part to help. As a user of online services, be aware of and alert to the problem. No one should seek out child pornography (possession of child pornography is always illegal), but if you see  any behavior online that you believe might exploit or harm a child, report it as abuse to the online service. And if you know about or suspect child abuse in any form, report it to the National Center’s CyberTipline.

Good work by Microsoft and Facebook to combat such exploitations.

Source: Microsoft Blog