UK Edition
Microsoft accused of trying to 'protect its brand' after failing to provide inquiry with grooming figures
Microsoft was accused of trying to "protect its brand" after it failed to produce grooming figures to a national child abuse inquiry.
Hugh Milward, the company’s UK director for corporate, external and legal Affairs, told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) Thursday he was unable to provide figures for incidents of grooming on its live chat services Xbox Live and Skype.
Under questioning, Mr Milward admitted that “grooming does take place” on the platforms but that the company was improving its technology to monitor and flag conversations.
Jacqueline Carey, the inquiry’s counsel, asked how, if the company did not record the amount of grooming happening, it knew what resources to dedicate to the problem.
She added: “Is it the case that Microsoft don’t want to publicly state a figure like that lest it damages the brand?"
Mr Milward responded that Microsoft “would be happy to state (such figures)” and apologised for not having them for the inquiry.
Following his testimony, a spokesman for Mircosoft told the Telegraph: “We will be working with the inquiry to provide additional data where possible, but we have nothing further to add at this time.”
Earlier in the hearing, the Microsoft executive also declined to provide a figure for the number of employees it had classifying child abuse material, saying only that it was “in the tens”. The company said that the number of employees that deal with the issue in some capacity stretched to over 1,000.
His comments come as Apple told IICSA on Wednesday that it only had six employees trained worldwide to investigate child abuse material.
Mr Milward also questioned the effectiveness of a proposal from the National Crime Agency that online apps and services should carry a “kitemark” indicating how safe they are for children. He said such kitemarked spaces could “effectively become a honeypot” that paedophiles would try to infiltrate.
He added: “But I think in some respects it's an idea that is worth trying out on a limited degree to see if it works in practice”.
Google also appeared before the inquiry on Thursday and revealed it had around 400 employees who deal with child abuse across all its services such as Gmail and Google Drive.
Kristie Canegallo, the company’s vice president and global lead for trust and safety, told the inquiry that it also deleted thousands of underage YouTube accounts every week.
Asked if the high deletion figure was an indicator that YouTube's age verification was “inadequate in the first place,'' she said it was an issue that Google took “very seriously”. However, Ms Canegallo added she did not know of any plans to change YouTube's current system.