A Fileserve Statement said:

"Once again IWF has put Fileserve into watch list until further investigation from their side is done. It is not expected to be lifted within the next few days. IWF(Internet Watch Foundation) for UK is being very thorough in filtering Fileserve users.

Please be reminded that it is not our will to have our UK users suffer from this, our Tech team are now looking into possible solution in getting around this IWF issue.

Until we figure out a possible solution, it is wise to do the cache cleaning every now and then and trying a different browser. If you happen to have a download manager, register your Fileserve premium account so that you won’t need to enter your details for every download you do.

Your patience and understanding regarding this issue will be highly appreciated."

Virgin Media's Mark Wilkin said:

"We've contacted the IWF and they're confirmed that Fileserve.com is not on their watchlist, but that a specific URL on Fileserve is. They've temporarily removed that URL from the watchlist and are currently attempting to contact Fileserve about the claims they've made and to try and resolve this. The updated watchlist was published at 6pm today so it should already be having an effect.

Previous problems with file sharing services have occurred because once a host has a URL on the watchlist all traffic towards that host is run through a web proxy that blocks requests for that URL. Filehost sites then see all of our traffic coming from a small number of IP addresses and can interpret this as overuse causing them to block that traffic. We've previously resolved this by asking the companies to whitelist our proxy IP addresses."

An IWF Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

"All public reports to the IWF are assessed against UK legislation and according to levels set by the Sentencing Guidelines Council.

Where content is hosted outside the UK and steps to have that content removed are in progress, the UK internet industry has voluntarily agreed to block access to them using a list provided by the IWF. We consider blocking to be a short-term disruption tactic which can help protect internet users from stumbling across these images, whilst processes to have them removed are instigated.

IWF’s role in this blocking initiative is restricted to the compilation and provision of a list: the blocking solution is entirely a matter for the company deploying the list. Our list is designed and provided for blocking specific URLs only. Any decision to convert or adapt the list to block whole domains may lead to the overblocking of legitimate content and is not supported by the IWF.

We received a report of child sexual abuse content hosted on a Fileserve URL which was assessed as criminal under UK law. It is not uncommon to see child sexual abuse content hosted on legitimate cloud storage sites, in our most recent Annual Report we identified this trend as increasing. Our members Virgin Media have been investigating an issue regarding a Fileserve splash page message, the IWF have no control over any of the messages provided by Fileserve."