Microsoft tackles spread of child abuse imagery with free online tool

Microsoft has launched a free online tool to help try and prevent the spread of child sexual abuse images.
According to Microsoft, around 720,000 illegal images of children are among the 1.8 billion photos uploaded to the internet every day. PhotoDNA is a free cloud-based service that can be used to hunt down and remove these photos from the web.
"Finding these known child sex abuse images in that huge universe is like finding a needle in a haystack," said Courtney Gregoire, a senior attorney at Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit. "We needed an easier, more scalable way to identify and detect these worst of the worst images … and that's how the concept for PhotoDNA in the cloud was born."
The tool has been designed to be used by companies like Flipboard, which allows users to share content, the ability to identify and halt the spread of these images in order to prevent young victims and ensure the platform remains safe...

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/16/microsoft-free-tool-combats-online-child-sexual-abuse-imagery