European police say Kidflix is ”one of the world's largest pedophile platforms”
German investigators said Wednesday they removed a major platform for images of child sexual abuse with 1.8 million users worldwide, an international operation coordinated by the Pan-European Police Agency Europol.
Guido Limmer, deputy chief of the Bavarian criminal police, said the move to shut down the “Kidflix” streaming service was “one of the biggest blows to child pornography in recent years,” said Guido Limmer, deputy chief of the Bavarian criminal police.
The investigation was led by German police and coordinated by Europol, supported by authorities in 38 countries, including Australia, Canada and the United States.
Overall, “Kidflix” is said to host more than 91,000 videos, including images of child sexual abuse, totaling about 6,288 hours of video, according to the Bavarian Police Department.
Authorities were able to identify nearly 1,400 individual users of the platform, which is hosted on so-called Darknet or Dark Web.
Europol
According to Limmer, police searched in March in the “largest operation ever” in 31 countries.
A joint raid by German and Dutch authorities led to a hard drive capture and about 72,000 videos of child sexual abuse, he said.
Bavarian police said in Germany, police raided 96 locations targeting 103 individual suspects.
German authorities said they worked to identify child victims of abuse while the investigation was still ongoing.
Police arrested a 36-year-old man in the eastern German city of Chemnitz in January 2024 who searched for images of abuse on “Kidflix”.
The man also “provided a game for his young son,” Lemmer said. The child has been handed over to child protection services.
Lin Mo said investigators were also able to identify “sequential” abusers in the United States.
According to Europol, “Kidflix” was created in 2021 by “cyber criminals profiting from it”, “it soon became one of the most popular platforms among pedophiles.
According to the International Police Department, about 3.5 new videos are uploaded to the site every hour before they are removed.
