Child sex abuse content is the top online concern of internet surfers in the UK and 1.5 million adults could have stumbled upon it, a new study revealed.
More people in the UK are concerned about such websites than other types of illegal, illicit or “harmful” content, including terrorist websites.
However, more than half of the people surveyed said they would not know how to report it (40%) or would just ignore it (12%).
The ComRes poll conducted among a representative sample of 2,058 British adults for the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) shows the vast majority of people in Britain (91%) think that child sexual abuse content should be removed from the internet.
In Scotland, 85% of respondents were concerned about child sexual exploitation and 74% with computer generated or cartoons of abuse, compared to 69% who are concerned about terrorist websites.
The study also revealed 71% of Scottish respondents were concerned about violent or extreme pornography, 58% about racist or homophobic hate sites, 53% with sites promoting suicide and 51% with eating disorder sites.
The survey also revealed some differences in views between men and women, with women being more concerned than men across all categories of material.
Across the UK, 4% of men and 2% of women said they have come into contact with child sex abuse images, or have stumbled across it.
Four times the proportion of men who acknowledged having come into contact with it said they would ignore it if they stumbled across it (16%).
Throughout the whole of 2012, the IWF logged just 73 UK web pages hosting child sexual abuse images or videos compared to 9,477 hosted in other countries.
Of the 73 UK web pages, 41 were removed within 60 minutes of the IWF notifying the host company or internet service provider and 57 were removed in two hours or less.
However, CEO of the IWF, Susie Hargreaves, said more still needs to be done.
She said: “What is concerning for us is that not enough people know how to report this or would rather ignore it, especially considering the survey tells us that around 1.5 million British adults have seen this sort of content online.
“We need to prevent people from stumbling upon this content and assist other countries in creating a hostile environment for hosting it.”