German investigators said on Wednesday that they had dismantled a major platform for the distribution of children’s abuse images that had 1.8 million users worldwide, in an international operation coordinated by the Porelopian police agency Europol.
The decision to close the “Kidflix” streaming service was “one of the greatest blows against the juvenile pornography of recent years, otherwise never,” said Guido Limmer, deputy chief of Bavarian criminal police.
The investigation was carried out by German police and supported by authorities in 38 countries, including Australia, Canada and the United States, under the Coordination of Europol.
In all, “Kidflix” would have welcomed more than 91,000 videos with images of sexual abuse on children, totaling around 6,288 hours of video, according to the Bavarian police forces.
The authorities were able to identify nearly 1,400 individual users of the platform, which was hosted on the so-called Darknet or dark web.
Europol
In March, the police carried out searches in places of 31 countries of the “largest operation ever organized” by Europol, according to Limmer.
A joint descent from the German and Dutch authorities led to the seizure of a hard drive with around 72,000 sexual abuse videos on children, he said.
In Germany, police made raids at 96 locations, targeting 103 individual suspects, said the Bavarian police.
The German authorities said they worked to identify the children victims of the abuse while the investigation was still underway.
Police arrested a 36 -year -old man in the city of Chemnitz de l’Est German in January 2024 who had sought images of abuse on “Kidflix”.
The man also “offered his young son for the matches,” said Limmer. The child had been given to the child protection services.
Investigators had also been able to identify an attacker “in series” in the United States, said Limmer.
“Kidflix” was created in 2021 by a “cybercriminal which made it a huge profit”, according to Europol “because it quickly became one of the most popular platforms among pedophiles.”
According to the International International Police Agency.
