Online boundaries?

In Switzerland, at least a quarter of young people today have been asked to send erotic images of themselves. The number of suspicious activity reports (SARs) sent to fedpol continued to rise in 2025.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the USA is one of fedpol’s most important non-police partners in the fight against child sexual offences. Online and social media platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and many others are required to report illegal pornographic content to this non-profit US organisation. If an SAR has a link to Switzerland, the NCMEC forwards it to fedpol.

In 2025, fedpol received 16,750 NCMEC reports, around 1,000 more than in the previous year. The number of SARs has been rising steadily since 2021 – partly because the algorithms used by online and social media platforms are becoming increasingly accurate and detecting more material, and partly because the volume of illegal pornographic material online is growing all the time. As an example, there are more and more images and videos of children and young people circulating online that they have taken and sent themselves. Individuals in this age group are often unaware that they may be committing a crime, or that they and their images could be exploited. In addition, child sexual offenders are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The more accessible AI image and video generators become, the greater the potential danger.

Two further figures illustrate that a growing volume of CSAM is circulating online. In 2025, fedpol received 863 reports via the online form on its website. In addition, the organisation Kinderschutz Schweiz (available in German, French and Italian) forwarded 2,432 reports to fedpol during the same period.

After receiving the reports, fedpol checks whether the content indicates any criminal conduct under Swiss law and, if necessary, carries out further enquiries. If a crime appears to have been committed and a possible perpetrator can be identified, fedpol forwards the case to the relevant cantonal authorities. A report can contain several images and videos and is used by the cantonal police as the basis for further investigations and for deciding whether to open criminal proceedings against the perpetrators. In 2025, fedpol filed 1,992 reports.