Russia shuts down 90 child porn sites

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MOSCOW, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- More than 90 Russian websites depicting child pornography have been shut down since the beginning of the year, the Interior Ministry said.

"We have shut down over 90 websites in Russia for the dissemination of illicit content. Those are the websites that have been confirmed as carrying child pornography," Tatyana Shishova of the Interior Ministry's Interpol National Central Bureau said Monday at an Internet security conference.

The ministry said the number of child pornography websites registered in Russia has risen twelve-fold in the past four years. Human rights officials said Russia is second only to the United States in the production of child pornography, with more than 550 such websites registered in the country last year.

The shutting down of the websites is part of a large-scale operation to combat child pornography in cooperation with authorities in more than 50 countries, RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.