Online Tools Get New Limits on Searching for Child Abuse Content

The European Parliament adopted several changes to Regulation (EU) 2021/1232 on 11 March 2026. The amendments mainly tighten how online services can use technology to find child‑sexual‑abuse material and set a new end date for the regulation.

Key points

1. Scope of the technology (Amendment 1)

• The technology must only look for known child‑sexual‑abuse material and for requests that might involve children.
• It can only use the data that is strictly needed for that purpose and must not touch other content or traffic data.
• End‑to‑end encrypted messages are excluded from any scanning.

2. Targeted users (Amendment 5)

• A new rule allows authorities to focus the technology on specific users or groups who have a reasonable suspicion of being linked to child‑sexual‑abuse material, as identified by a court.

3. Privacy‑friendly technology (Amendment 2)

• The tools used must be the most advanced and least intrusive.
• They can only detect patterns that suggest abuse; they cannot read the actual content.
• If the tool is used to find child‑sexual‑abuse material that was not previously known, it can only do so when a user, a trusted flagger, or a child‑abuse organisation has reported a specific case, and it must stay limited to what is needed for that case.

4. New expiry date (Amendment 3)

• The regulation will now apply until 3 August 2027 (instead of 3 April 2028).

5. Next steps

• The Parliament has sent the amendments back to the relevant committee for further negotiations.