NCMEC Partners With Yubo, to Tackle Online Exploitation

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the leading non-profit organization to find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation and prevent future victimization, is partnering with Yubo, the world’s largest social discovery platform, to ensure the safety of young people in the digital age. Yubo joins the ranks of some of the world’s most prominent tech giants, as part of its work in introducing unparalleled safety features to the platform which caters solely to a younger generation.

Starting today, the Yubo moderation team, a team solely dedicated to preventing unsafe user behavior on the platform, will be able to report suspected online child exploitation to NCMEC’s CyberTipline in real-time, at just the click of a button. When NCMEC receives a report, that information is made available to law enforcement around the world for them to review and investigate. Yubo will identify suspicious profiles by hash value matching with NCMEC’s hash sharing database, which tracks the ‘digital fingerprint’ of known images and files that contain child sexual abuse content.

NCMEC will also take on an advisory position for Yubo, counselling on the development of moderation and safety tools. John Shehan, VP of NCMEC’s Exploited Children Division, joins the Safety Board of Yubo, whose existing members include leaders from other key public and non-profit organizations like Thorn, Diana Award, ex-Interpol, the London’s mental health service Good Thinking,  and the founder of NetFamilyNews.org. John’s role with the platform emphasizes Yubo’s dedication to working transparently and positively with the most influential safety organizations across the globe, dedicated to the protection of young internet users.

John Shehan says, “We are impressed with Yubo’s commitment to the safety of their users and their innovative solutions to making a safer environment online. We’re proud to work with them to continue to develop tools that will protect young people from exploitation.”

Marc-Antoine Durand, Chief Operating Officer of Yubo adds, “User safety is the top priority for Yubo. We are one of the only social platforms that invests this heavily in human, technical and financial resources to continuously ensure that Yubo is the most secure platform for Gen Z.”

“Our partnership with NCMEC ensures that cases of exploitation are flagged instantly, allowing local authorities to have complete access to information in order to apprehend digital perpetrators in a faster and smarter way than ever before.”

The announcement of the partnership is further supported by the launch of two new safety features on the platform. The first will prevent profiles that do not feature a profile picture; a new tool requires users to upload a photo of themselves in order to access and use the app. Furthermore, a second tool created by Yubo will detect and alert the user - in real-time - when they are about to share personal information such as their location, email address or phone number, allowing them to rethink sending a message.

These new features add to Yubo’s existing safety credentials, including age estimation in partnership with Yoti Age Scan, real-time moderation intervention on social videos as well as its continuous collaboration with police forces worldwide, securing the platform as the world’s leading social media destination which promotes safety as its highest priority.

Annie Mullins, co-founder of The Trust and Safety Group and an independent safety advisor says,

“It takes an army to fight against exploitation of young people. We need tech companies to work with local non-profit organizations and law enforcement to ensure that offenders face the full force of the law.”

“From educating and empowering users through built-in-app safety tools, to partnerships with important and relevant organizations like NCMEC, Yubo’s commitment to safety is commendable, and should serve as an example to other social platforms.”

With a global community of over 28 million young people on the platform, and with tens of thousands of new members joining the community each day, Yubo is committed to ensuring the safety of every person on the platform.