In one of the largest coordinated law enforcement operations, authorities have dismantled Kidflix, a streaming platform that provides child sex abuse material (CSAM).
“A total of 1.8 million users worldwide were logged on to the platform between April 2022 and March 2025,” Europol said in a statement. “On March 11, 2025, the server, which at the time contained around 72,000 videos, was seized by German and Dutch authorities.”
European law enforcement described it as the biggest operation carried out to combat sexual exploitation of children. This is the operation stream for codenames.
The multi-year probe, which began in 2022 and involved 38 countries around the world, has identified 1,393 people worldwide through analysis of payment transactions, with 79 of whom have now been arrested for distributing CSAMs. Several individuals arrested are not only accused of uploading and watching such content, but also of being abused children.
Additionally, more than 3,000 electronic devices have been seized. The investigation is still underway.
According to Europol, Kidflix was released in 2021 and has accumulated a catalog of 91,000 unique videos over time. On average, about 3.5 new videos were uploaded to the platform every hour.
The platform, which had around 190,000 registered users since April 2022, provided the ability to download and stream content after users made payments using cryptocurrency until shutdown, which was then converted to tokens.
“By uploading CSAM, reviewing video titles and descriptions, and assigning categories to the video, criminals were able to earn a token, which was used to display the content,” Europol said.
“Each video is uploaded to multiple versions of low, medium and high quality, allowing criminals to preview the content and pay to unlock the high quality version.”
That said, the identified offenders represent just a small portion of the 1.8 million users suspected of logging into the platform between April 2022 and March this year. Dutch police officers say 13 suspects have been identified in the Netherlands, but no arrests have been made so far.
Participating countries include Albania, Australia, Austria, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Ritouan, Malta, Malta, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the United States.
“The digital dimension has facilitated the rapid evolution of child sexual exploitation online, providing criminals with contact information and groom victims, and providing a boundary-free platform for creating, storing and exchanging child sexual abuse materials.”
“Some people just try to frame this as a technical or cyber issue, but that’s not the case. There are real victims behind these crimes, and those victims are children.”
This development is for the European Commission to announce a new internal security strategy called ProtectEU to better detect cyber threats, combat serious and organized crime, and share intelligence across the region.
As part of the initiative, the committee is expected to “present a technology roadmap on encryption in 2026 to identify and evaluate technology solutions that will allow law enforcement to legally access data.”
The idea is to “identify and evaluate technological solutions that allow law enforcement to access encrypted data in a legitimate way, protecting cybersecurity and fundamental rights.”
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