Protecting children online

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) acts as a center of excellence in the pursuit of child abusers. It carries out criminal investigations and works with police forces and law enforcement agencies around the world via the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT).

Since April 2006, Visa has made a commitment to support this London-based law enforcement agency by providing CEOP with financial support, intelligence and expertise, helping it to identify those engaged in the sexual exploitation of children.

Visa has a clear position on the use of its payment products to trade child abuse imagery on the internet: we do not allow it, regardless of whether the activity is deemed legal in any jurisdiction. In addition, we work closely with our member banks to ensure merchants who accept Visa cards to trade child abuse imagery have their merchant contracts terminated.

Another example of Visa’s work in this area can be found in Greece. Visa Hellas has worked closely with the E-Crime Unit of the Hellenic Police and supported its efforts to fight child abuse. They are aiming to create a center of excellence in Greece following the CEOP example.

In October 2007, the Italian Police Forces joined the VGT. We supported CEOP in their efforts to communicate the important news at local level and promote this amongst opinion formers in Italy.

Further information

 Visa Europe case study (PDF, 0.1MB)

 CEOP’s website

 Virtual Global Taskforce – made up of police forces from around the world working together to fight online child abuse.

 Thinkuknow.co.uk – CEOP website dedicated for young people, offering advice on how to stay safe online.

 Safer Internet Day 2008