About Hotline

What is National Node Hotline?

Hotline is a way to take active part in making your Internet space safer from illegal and harmful content. Very often users meet with child sexual abuse or violence scenes, narco- or cults propaganda and feel that they can’t do anything to eliminate it from the Internet, to protect children from these threats and their influence. The Internet Hotline is the instrument that helps to solve this problem in a convenient and quick way.

The two main advantages of the Hotline are that you can report illegal content not getting out of your computer and that you can do it anonymously. If you do not have time or do not want to go to the police, sign a lot of papers and reveal your real name and address (you can’t make an anonymous report to Russian LEAs) – our Hotline is the way for you. Here you can leave an anonymous report or you may leave your E-mail – in such case you will receive an answer about what was done about your report.

National Node’s Hotline is NOT a LEA’s (police) hotline. This is the initiative of civil society supported by Public Chamber of Russian Federation. Our work is independent and impartial. However, in cases where criminal scene is obvious or where civil society mechanisms do not work, information is transmitted to LEAs according to the agreements with them. We work according to the law of Russian Federation on the illegal content which is in Russian jurisdiction.

Since May 2009 National Node Hotline is a member of INHOPE – Internet Hotlines Association which includes 35 hotlines from 31 countries. Being thus an INHOPE contact hotline in Russia, we have a possibility to send information about illegal content from outside Russia to the partner hotline in the country where this illegal content is situated.

How to make a report and What goes then?

Our Hotline works on 12 categories of illegal content – this is the only hotline (at least in INHOPE) that works on such amount of illegal content categories. You can choose a suitable category in the menu on “Report Illegal Content” page. To make a report it is enough to provide a link to the possibly illegal content, choose a category from the menu and to prove that you are not a robot J

When you submit a report it is being checked by Hotline Analysts. Hotline Analyst checks if the provided link is valid, if access to the content provided is possible and, finally, if the content provided seems illegal. If necessary, the Analyst sends the content to the Experts – the leading specialists in the respective fields of science in Russia. For example, all texts go through the Experts.

If the content reported seems illegal, the ISP or domain registrar is informed about it and is asked to take the content down. Many leading Russian ISPs and web services have proper agreements with National Node to react and block or delete such content. If someone does not respond or if the LEA involvement is necessary, the information is transmitted to proper LEA – we are the only Russian hotline that co-operates with several LEAs depending on their specialization. If the content is hosted outside Russia, the information is transmitted to the proper INHOPE hotline.

So you may be sure that we will do our best for taking down the reported content. Our practice proved effectiveness of the chosen model and interest of users to public way of making Internet safer.