European Commission Publishes Child Sexual Abuse Regulation Draft Technical Standards

The European Commission published draft technical standards on 3 October 2026 to accompany the proposed Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), specifying the types of detection technology that designated online services would be required to deploy under a detection order. The standards mandate real-time scanning for known child sexual abuse material using hash-matching, detection of new CSAM via classifier models, and behaviour-based detection of grooming patterns in private communications, with strict limitations on data retention and a requirement that detection systems report risk indicators rather than message content to a new EU Centre on Child Sexual Abuse.

The Commission's technical framework is explicit: effective protection requires detection of harmful behaviour patterns in private messaging, not blanket content scanning. Guardii's grooming and CSAM detection modules are designed to meet precisely this standard, identifying sustained targeting, coercive escalation and image-based abuse across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, and reporting the shape and seriousness of a conversation rather than forwarding message content. The system flags the threat pattern for human review by a parent, professional or authority, enabling intervention before harm is completed while preserving the principle that the platform or safety layer does not hold a feed of what was said.