The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a private, nonprofit organization established in 1984 by the United States Congress.

[2] Primarily funded by the United States Department of Justice, the NCMEC acts as an information clearinghouse and resource for parents, children, law enforcement agencies, schools, and communities to assist in locating missing children and to raise public awareness about ways to prevent child abduction, and child sexual abuse.

In this resource capacity, the NCMEC distributes photographs of missing children and accepts tips and information from the public.

Because police had the ability to record and track information about stolen cars, guns, and even horses with the FBI's national crime computer, it was believed that the same should be done to find victims and the procurers.

[11] Due to this partnership, some stories featured extra information for kids to stay safe from abductions, sexual predators, etc.

This also caused his animated series to feature a clip titled "Protect Yourself" in which safety information for kids would be given by then popular child actors.

NCMEC released a statement: "The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children just learned that Backpage.com was seized by the FBI, IRS, and the U.S.

"[14][15] Most recently, the Center supported the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2022, which passed the United States Senate on November 15, 2022, as well as Congress on December 6, 2022.

On April 1, 2008, the US Office of Children's Issues re-assumed U.S. Central Authority duties for processing incoming cases under the Hague Abduction Convention.

[32] In 2021, the group faced criticism over a partnership with Apple to produce and implement monitoring software for iOS 15, intended to continuously monitor all users' iCloud photos uploaded as part of iCloud Photo Library "to confirm whether it contains child pornography"; the software would send any image to human reviewers that "matches one in the database of the [NCMEC]", and user data would be forwarded to NCMEC for law enforcement review.

[34][35] An editorial in The New York Times by Matthew D. Green and Alex Stamos said that, while many platforms (like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) have screened public user uploads for a long time, Apple's promise to only evaluate photos which use its iCloud service was a policy decision, not a technological requirement limiting access to users' personal devices.

[36] In a company-wide internal letter to Apple employees in response to public opposition to the system, NCMEC’s executive director of strategic partnerships Marita Rodriguez described criticism as the "screeching voices of the minority.

The NCMEC reviews these reports and shares them with the appropriate law enforcement agency or Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.

[43] In December of 2020, NCMEC’s CyberTipline reached a daunting new milestone after surpassing 100 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation.