WEBTOON Increases Preemptive Blocking Rate of Illegal Webtoon Distribution with 'Toon Radar'

[Financial News] WEBTOON’s proprietary anti-piracy technology, 'Toon Radar,' has significantly improved the blocking rate of accounts attempting illegal webtoon distribution.
On the 18th, WEBTOON announced the release of the '2025 Toon Radar Report: Effectiveness of Preemptive Blocking Technology,' which details these findings.
Since July 2017, Toon Radar has been used to track illegal copies of WEBTOON’s content both domestically and internationally, predict suspicious users, and block them in advance. From the early stages, WEBTOON integrated AI to quickly and efficiently respond to the rapidly evolving methods of webtoon piracy, and has continued to enhance these technologies. This year, the company focused on advancing technologies for detecting stolen accounts, identifying manipulated automated access, and recognizing abnormal behavior patterns. These efforts have made illegal copying and distribution more difficult and have delayed the timing of leaks.
According to the report published on WEBTOON With Story, the average number of paid episodes rented per account attempting illegal distribution on WEBTOON’s Korean platform has dropped to one-tenth of previous levels. This means that the cost for operators of illegal sites to obtain content has increased more than tenfold. As the number of episodes that can be stolen per account decreases, it becomes increasingly difficult to duplicate illegal content.
For the top 50 most popular domestic titles, which are typically leaked quickly and suffer significant revenue losses, the gap between the latest episode on illegal sites and the official platform has widened by about three times from the beginning to the end of the year. Since the latest paid episodes become free on the official platform after a certain period, delaying their appearance on illegal sites is crucial for protecting creators’ earnings.
The number of titles copied to illegal sites on the same day as their official release has decreased by about 80% as of November, compared to the average for the first to third quarters of this year, greatly improving the defense rate. If the latest episodes are not quickly uploaded to illegal sites, it diminishes the user experience for those platforms.
According to WEBTOON, the strengthened preemptive blocking by Toon Radar has indirectly contributed to a decrease in traffic to illegal sites. Data from Similarweb shows that, since September this year, the average monthly traffic to the largest illegal webtoon site in Korea has dropped by about 33% compared to the first half of the year.


yjjoe@fnnews.com Reporter Jo Yoon-joo Reporter