Banks to cancel paedophile credit cards

Banks and building societies have been given new powers to find out if their customers have been using credit cards to access child abuse images on the internet.

Police will now be able to pass on information on people cautioned or convicted of internet child pornography offences to the card issuers following an amendment to the Data Protection Act. Banks will then be able to cancel the cards and account used to commit the offence as a result of a breach of the terms and conditions of usage.

Before the amendment, data sharing restrictions meant that police were unable to notify card issuers if any of their customers were using their credit cards to access illegal material online.

The change in the law comes after collaboration between payments industry body Apacs, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Home Office and children's charities.

Sandra Quinn, director of corporate communications at Apacs, said in a statement: "No card provider wants to be associated with those who commit these crimes. With this change in the law our members will have the information they need to remove offenders' cards."

Data protection minister Baroness Cathy Ashton said the new powers, which come into force on 26 July, are vital for disrupting and curtailing paedophile activity on the internet.

New figures from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) show that half of all child abuse content reported to the IWF during the first six months of this year was traced to the US. The number of websites displaying images of child abuse hosted in the UK has actually fallen however - down to just 0.2 per cent of the total worldwide compared to 18 per cent in 1997.

The IWF report has also found a trend for hosting non-commercial images of child abuse on Japanese message boards, as well as growing use of online photo album services posting images and distributing videos online.

The IWF 'hotline' received 5,000 reports of child pornography websites during the first six months of this year - up by 49 per cent on the same period last year.

Illegal content can be reported online via the IWF hotline.