BT Retail's Total Broadband ISP service has revealed that it blocks between 35,000 and 40,000 attempts to access child pornography sites every single day. However BT warns that the use of botnets (computers controlled by Trojans or Viruses) and UK proxies make it hard to judge how many of these attempts are made by real people.

Typically BT, like many UK ISPs, use the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) list of up to 1200 child abuse sites as its basis for the blocks. This method has, in the recent past, caused problems by attempting to limit access to content on legitimate sites too, such as Wikipedia (news).


Presently just 5% of UK ISPs, mostly the smallest broadband providers, have not yet adopted such a filtering system due to cost or technical concerns. This may not last for long with both the EU and MP's in the UK government now seeking to clamp down further.