Verizon Joins With the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to Fight Online Child Pornography

WASHINGTON - Verizon has joined forces with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to further the fight against child pornography and help protect children from online exploitation. 

Under an agreement announced Friday (March 28), NCMEC will periodically provide Verizon with information about Web sites containing child pornography.  Verizon will determine whether any of these sites are hosted on a Verizon owned and operated server used to offer storage or Web hosting services.  If so, Verizon will remove or disable access to the content and report the action to NCMEC, as federal law requires. 

Michael McKeehan, Verizon executive director of Internet and technology policy, said, "Verizon's agreement with NCMEC will provide an important tool to identify and, if found, remove images of child exploitation from our servers. The agreement gives Verizon another route to help identify and eradicate child pornography."

McKeehan has responsibility for child and teen online safety at Verizon, and serves as chairman of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international industry group dedicated to empowering parents and kids, as well as providing labeling and filtering tools to end-users. 

Today Verizon responds to reports from its own customers about child pornography they spot online, investigates and takes appropriate action.  The new process will enable Verizon to also respond to similar reports from the thousands of other Internet users who report child pornography images via NCMEC's CyberTipline at www.cybertipline.org. 

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), headquartered in New York, is a leader in delivering broadband and other wireline and wireless communication innovations to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving nearly 66 million customers nationwide.  Verizon's Wireline operations include Verizon Business, which delivers innovative and seamless business solutions to customers around the world, and Verizon Telecom, which brings customers the benefits of converged communications, information and entertainment services over the nation's most advanced fiber-optic network.  A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of nearly 235,000 and last year generated consolidated operating revenues of $93.5 billion.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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