Paedophile block catches 20,000 a day

Shocking new figures showing the full extent of internet paedophilia have revealed that thousands of people are trying to view child porn on the web every day.

A new system set up by BT to block access to child porn sites is stopping more than 20,000 hits a day from web surfers looking for the illegal images, the company said.

BT's new Clean Feed system registered nearly 250,000 attempts to view web pages containing illegal images of child pornography in its first three weeks of operation. The Internet-Wa t ch Found at ion described the figures as " staggering".

The Clean Feed system prevents access to any sites registered by the IWF as "illegal to view" under the 1978 Child Protection Act.

A police spokesman said that child pornography was a major problem and that the BT figures were "extremely disturbing".

Police leaders are now calling for other service providers to create similar blocks.