In one of many largest coordinated legislation enforcement operations, authorities have dismantled Kidflix, a streaming platform that provided youngster sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
“A complete of 1.8 million customers worldwide logged on to the platform between April 2022 and March 2025,” Europol mentioned in a press release. “On March 11, 2025, the server, which contained round 72,000 movies on the time, was seized by German and Dutch authorities.”
The European legislation enforcement company described it as the biggest operation undertaken to fight youngster sexual exploitation. It has been codenamed Operation Stream.
The multi-year probe, which commenced in 2022 and concerned 38 nations the world over, noticed 1,393 recognized globally by an evaluation of cost transactions, with 79 of them arrested so far for distributing CSAM. A few of the apprehended people have additionally been accused of not solely importing and watching such content material but additionally abused kids.
As well as, greater than 3,000 digital units have been seized. The investigation stays ongoing.
In keeping with Europol, Kidflix launched in 2021 and amassed a catalog of 91,000 distinctive movies over time. Roughly 3.5 new movies have been uploaded to the platform each hour on common.
The platform, which had about 190,000 registered customers since April 2022 and till its shutdown, provided the flexibility to each obtain and stream the content material after customers made funds utilizing cryptocurrencies, which have been then transformed into tokens.
“By importing CSAM, verifying video titles and descriptions and assigning classes to movies, offenders might earn tokens, which have been then used to view content material,” Europol mentioned.
“Every video was uploaded in a number of variations – low, medium and prime quality – permitting criminals to preview the content material and pay a payment to unlock greater high quality variations.”
That mentioned, the recognized offenders signify solely a fraction of the 1.8 million customers who’re suspected to have logged on to the platform between April 2022 and March of this 12 months. Per Dutch police officers, 13 suspects have been recognized within the Netherlands, though no arrests have been made to date.
Taking part nations included Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Eire, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA.
“The digital dimension has pushed a speedy evolution in on-line youngster sexual exploitation, providing offenders a borderless platform to contact and groom victims, in addition to to create, retailer, and alternate youngster sexual abuse materials,” mentioned Catherine De Bolle, Europol Govt Director.
“Some try to border this as merely a technical or cyber difficulty – however it’s not. There are actual victims behind these crimes, and people victims are kids.”
The event comes because the European Fee unveiled a brand new inside safety technique known as ProtectEU to raised detect cyber threats, combat critical and arranged crimes, and share intelligence throughout the area.
As a part of the initiative, the Fee is predicted to “current a Know-how Roadmap on encryption to determine and assess technological options to allow lawful entry to knowledge by legislation enforcement authorities in 2026.”
The thought, it added, is to “determine and assess technological options that might allow legislation enforcement authorities to entry encrypted knowledge in a lawful method, safeguarding cybersecurity and basic rights.”
