Police have taken down one of the world’s biggest child abuse networks, which was active in nearly 35 countries. The European Union’s police agency, Europol, said 79 people were arrested for sharing and spreading child sexual abuse content on a platform called Kidflix.

Kidflix was started in 2021 by a cybercriminal who made a lot of money from it, Europol said. The platform quickly became a major website used by paedophiles.

It was a dark web streaming site that gave people access to thousands of extremely disturbing videos showing child sexual abuse, including very young children.

In just three years, the site had about 1.8 million users from around the world. It held around 91,000 different videos, which added up to nearly 6,288 hours of illegal content. The network made a large amount of profit from these crimes.

People who used Kidflix could watch or download the videos. They paid for it using cryptocurrency (a kind of online money), which was then changed into tokens. These tokens could also be earned by uploading new videos or helping to organize the website’s content.

The site was growing very fast — police said about 3.5 new videos were added every hour.

The police began an investigation called Operation Stream, led by officers in Germany and helped by police from 36 countries. In March 2025, police carried out large raids in 31 countries at the same time. Europol, the European police agency, said this was the biggest operation ever to fight child abuse online.

They arrested 79 people who were uploading or sharing these videos. In total, 1,400 suspects were identified. Most importantly, 39 children were rescued and protected during this mission.

In one particularly case during the operation, a 36-year-old man was arrested for searching child abuse images on Kidflix and offering his young son for exploitation. The boy was placed under child protection services.

Another case involved a “serial abuser” tracked down in the United States. Senior prosecutor Thomas Goger said that most identified suspects were between 20 and 40 years old, with an average age of 31. The youngest suspect was born in 2006, while the oldest was in their seventies. Many had been active on the darknet for years.

“While many people believe they can hide in these corners of the dark web, the online world is not anonymous,” said Det. Erik Bjarnason from Alberta’s Internet Child Exploitation unit.

During one raid conducted by German and Dutch authorities, investigators recovered nearly 72,000 videos of child sexual abuse.

New ProtectEU strategy against cyber threats

Due to growing cybercrime threats like Kidflix, the European Commission has launched a new internal security strategy called ProtectEU. This initiative aims to better detect cyber threats, combat serious organized crimes, and enhance intelligence sharing across Europe.

As part of ProtectEU, the Commission plans to present a Technology Roadmap on encryption by 2026. This roadmap will explore technological solutions to enable lawful access to encrypted data by law enforcement while safeguarding cybersecurity and fundamental rights.

 

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