Kidflix, a major child pornography streaming platform, dismantled

In a large-scale joint operation against cybercrime that spanned nearly three years, authorities in 38 countries dismantled Kidflix, a so-called child pornography streaming platform that had about 1.8 million users worldwide.

During this police operation, 79 people were arrested and 1,393 suspects were identified. More than 3,000 electronic devices were seized and 39 minors were enrolled in protection programs.

The European Police Office (Europol), a participant in the large-scale operation, issued a statement detailing the creation of Kidflix and reporting that the website had more than 91,000 videos of child pornography.

"Kidflix was created in 2021 by a cybercriminal who made a huge profit from it, as it quickly became one of the most popular platforms among paedophiles. According to authorities, 91 000 unique videos were uploaded and shared on the platform while it was active, with a total running time of 6 288 hours. On average, around 3.5 new videos were uploaded to the platform every hour, many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement," Europol explained.

European law enforcement explained that Kidflix allowed users to both view and download videos, as well as stream files between users. Subscriptions were paid for using cryptocurrencies.

"These are terrible, imaginable and unfortunately unimaginable acts of sexual abuse, committed with children, very young children, even babies, and made available in videos with a very good image quality," said Guido Limmer, deputy director of the criminal police of Bavaria (Germany), in statements picked up by AFP.

In this operation, defined as "the biggest raid" against child pornography, the specific team from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) participated, alongside authorities from countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Colombia, Australia and others.