History
Driven by a commitment to fulfill its clearinghouse role with improved data sharing, NCMEC has produced a public report about CyberTipline data annually since 2019. Insights shared by NCMEC in these reports include figures such as:
- Total CyberTipline reports, globally
- Total CyberTipline reports, by country/jurisdiction
- Total CyberTipline reports, by online platform
- Total CyberTipline reports, by reported incident type
- Total files reported, by file type (i.e., image, video, other file)
NCMEC has also highlighted certain trends derived from CyberTipline reports, including significant increases in online enticement reports, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence child sexual abuse material, and the impact of “informational” reports that lack sufficient detail to support law enforcement action to safeguard child victims and investigate offenders.
Through the Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy, NCMEC is now making available additional data in a more detailed format, so stakeholders around the world can identify insights to support their specific programmatic and advocacy objectives.
Definitions
Accurately understanding data points and terms related to the CyberTipline is essential to thoughtful and effective use of the data available through the Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy. Stakeholders should review the Data Definitions section of the Platform and ensure that their use and understanding of NCMEC’s data are consistent with the definitions described there.
The number or volume of CyberTipline reports resulting from any given query (whether by country, reporting online platform, incident type, etc.) should be understood to represent only the level of reporting. Specifically, CyberTipline report volume is not:
- a prevalence measurement for certain types of crime;
- a proxy for the number of children abused or exploited;
- the number of CSAM images or videos found online;
- the number of cases opened or investigated by law enforcement agencies; or
- a comprehensive indicator of how much (or how little) online child sexual exploitation is occurring on a particular platform or in a particular jurisdiction.
For more complete information about how to interpret NCMEC’s data, see the data descriptions associated with each data type on the Data Insights page of the Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy.
NCMEC encourages stakeholders to seek clarification about CyberTipline data and/or its meaning by contacting cybertipline@ncmec.org for assistance.
Opportunities
Using the Platform’s Data Insights page, users can access CyberTipline-related data about report volume, reported files, involved jurisdictions, incident types, reporting online platforms, and other details. This more granular presentation of data allows for jurisdiction-level insights available from NCMEC for the first time and only through the Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy.
Such insights may be useful to inform jurisdiction-specific policy or legislative advocacy; compare reporting volume between online platforms for a particular jurisdiction; understand challenges faced by law enforcement because of specific types of reports; etc.
CyberTipline statistics can also be combined with external data to create even more customized insights.
Example: Calculating a report rate
Various stakeholders frequently cite annual total CyberTipline report figures—more than 36.2 million reports in 2023—in press releases, social media posts, and other advocacy pieces. National governments sometimes report their country-specific totals, using either NCMEC’s published figures or their own internal records.
While NCMEC’s annual reports are useful for understanding its mission and role in operating the CyberTipline, jurisdictional totals have limited utility in understanding the challenges faced by stakeholders around the world. Jurisdictional totals only reveal how many reports—of all types, from all sources, with wide ranging levels of detail—NCMEC received for a particular jurisdiction. For example, because CyberTipline reporting is structured for compliance with U.S. laws, the content of those reports might not meet legal or policy thresholds for law enforcement action in another jurisdiction. Also, total figures (as shared in NCMEC’s annual reporting) include “informational” reports, which typically do not contain sufficient information to support safeguarding child victims or law enforcement investigations.
Even without the expanded access made possible through the Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy, analyzing CyberTipline data alongside other data sets allows for more helpful insights. By analyzing report totals with population estimates, a rate of reporting can be calculated to reveal greater clarity and more meaningful comparisons across jurisdictions.Consider, for example, India and Bangladesh. India has consistently held the top position for report totals, including in 2023 when the CyberTipline received 8.9 million reports for India. That enormous number of reports likely presents a significant challenge to Indian law enforcement agencies responsible for assessing and acting on them. Meanwhile, the CyberTipline received 2.5 million reports in 2023 for neighboring Bangladesh. A casual observer might quickly interpret this comparison as indicating a greater CyberTipline report workload for Indian law enforcement compared to Bangladeshi law enforcement. However, by calculating a rate of reports per 1000 population, a different picture emerges: adjusted for population, Bangladesh received more than twice as many reports (14.55 reports per 1000 population) as its larger neighbor, India (6.3).
Population figures help calculate the report rate, which can then be examined against other factors that may be worth considering when evaluating the impact of CyberTipline reporting in particular jurisdictions. For instance, Singapore’s 2023 report rate was about 6.22 per 1000 population; Sri Lanka has a similar rate of 6.19. However, Singapore is identified by the World Bank as a “High Income” country, while Sri Lanka is in the “Lower Middle Income” group.
| Country | Population | CyberTipline Reports (2023) | Reports per 1000 pop. | World Bank Income Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bangladesh | 171,186,372 | 2,491,000 | 14.55 | Lower middle income |
| India | 1,417,173,173 | 8,924,000 | 6.30 | Lower middle income |
| Singapore | 5,637,022 | 35,000 | 6.22 | High income |
| Sri Lanka | 22,181,000 | 137,000 | 6.19 | Lower middle income |
Although their report rates are very similar, Singapore likely has a greater capacity (enabled by financial resources) than Sri Lanka has for responding to CyberTipline reports.
Capacity challenges may be evident in the numbers of law enforcement, prosecutorial, and judicial personnel responsible for addressing crimes against children, and specifically handling CyberTipline reports and the government resources allocated to those personnel to support their work, including training and development of expertise by assigned personnel; etc. Thoughtful analysis of NCMEC’s data alongside these additional data sources will equip stakeholders (including policy makers, legislators, and civil society organizations) to more effectively advocate for changes that can help build capacity where needs exist.
By analyzing CyberTipline statistics alongside other datasets, stakeholders can develop custom insights specific to the harms, jurisdictions, and issues in which they are most interested. These insights, among others, can help stakeholders make more informed decisions to advance programming and advocacy.
Data Visualizations
Stakeholders can use data from NCMEC and other sources to create custom graphs, charts, and other visualizations to support their work. For example, these choropleth maps show the differences between CyberTipline report volume and rate:
When considering only the number of CyberTipline reports received for a particular jurisdiction, India, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Indonesia appear darkest on the map (having the highest numbers) and may seem to have greater burdens on law enforcement compared with other countries.
However, the map displaying CyberTipline reports per 1000 population reveals that, when considering the rate of reporting, India’s burden is less than the raw volume might have suggested, and 45 other countries have greater rates of reporting—and proportionately greater CyberTipline workloads—than India, despite receiving fewer reports overall.
Conclusion
The analysis of CyberTipline data with population estimates and economic indicators is only an example of different insights that might be revealed by examining how various datasets interact with each other. Datasets that might produce other insights when analyzed alongside CyberTipline data include, for example:
- Online platforms’ estimated user base or market share within a particular jurisdiction (Is a particular online platform reporting at unexpectedly high or low rates given its user base in a particular jurisdiction?)
- Internet penetration, or the percentage of a population with internet access (Do apparently high or low rates of reporting correspond to rates of internet access in a particular jurisdiction?)
- Mobile penetration, or the rate of users within a population that use mobile devices to access online services (Do reporting rates correlate with internet accessibility through mobile devices?)
- Language proficiency among a population (Do reporting rates for various platforms correlate to a population’s proficiency in a particular language?)
NCMEC encourages stakeholders to thoughtfully and creatively analyze data accessible through the Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy to identify correlations, conduct meaningful comparisons, and generate other custom insights in support of global programmatic and advocacy efforts to counter online child sexual exploitation. While doing so, stakeholders are advised to take care to accurately describe NCMEC’s data to avoid incorrect assertions and misinterpretations.