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THUS plc, owner of the leading ISP Demon brand, has announced that it is to take a more proactive role and will remove known paedophile newsgroups from its servers. THUS will continue to work with organisations across the industry to identify other measures to abolish illegal paedophile content.

THUS continually removes articles containing paedophilic content from its servers and in January alone, 647 articles were removed by THUS from newsgroups following the discovery of illegal material. Today's announcement means that not only will the articles be removed, but the known paedophile newsgroups will also be taken down.

THUS, a founder member of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)1, is participating with the group to improve the existing processes and is now encouraging the IWF to produce its hit list of known paedophile sites on a monthly basis to enable the offensive newsgroups to be removed quickly.

THUS will also be giving the IWF access to its newsfeed which will allow it to identify a wider range of articles and increase its abilities to be more proactive in the discovery and notification of paedophilic content.

"While it is impossible for ISPs to stop all illegal content from being published on newsgroups, I believe that there is much that can be done to police what is currently out there; to protect the vulnerable and to increase our vigilance." said director of legal and regulation at THUS, Keith Monserrat. "In the last three months, Thus has removed hundreds of articles that have been deemed by the IWF to be illegal. We have taken the next step in the process which is to remove the known paedophilic newsgroups."

THUS will be implementing a number of initiatives that are currently being developed, which are designed to educate parents and teachers about the best way to protect children from harmful content on the Internet. One of the first initiatives to be rolled out will be a UK-wide roadshow around local authorities, giving school representatives and parents the chance to ask Thus's team questions first-hand.

Keith continued: "Any initiative that will protect the most innocent in our society must be encouraged and we would welcome the opportunity of working with Children's Charities to help make this happen."