Websites which host pornography and other harmful content must introduce “robust” age checks to prevent children being exposed to it, Ofcom has said. Publishing the latest round of industry guidance ahead of beginning its enforcement of the Online Safety Act, the regulator said any sites hosting pornography must have age checks in place by July 2025.
Ofcom’s guidance said services which allow pornography or other adult content will be required to introduce age assurance tools, for example photo ID matching, facial age estimation or credit card checks, to prove a user is not a child. The regulator’s chief executive, Dame Melanie Dawes, said: “For too long, many online services which allow porn and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children are accessing their services.
“Either they don’t ask or, when they do, the checks are minimal and easy to avoid. That means companies have effectively been treating all users as if they’re adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content. Today, this starts to change.”
Under the Online Safety Act, all social media and search services are required to carry out a children’s access assessment to determine if their site is likely to be accessed by children, with Ofcom saying platforms have until April 16 to complete this. Ofcom said it will then publish codes of practice for sites which are likely to be accessed by children, which will set out how they can implement measures to keep younger users safe. Sites must then complete a children’s risk assessment by July and implement any required measures, which may include age checks.
These checks will be required, regardless of the type of site, if it allows pornography. “As age checks start to roll out in the coming months, adults will start to notice a difference in how they access certain online services,” Dame Melanie said.
“Services which host their own pornography must start to introduce age checks immediately, while other user-to-user services – including social media – which allow pornography and certain other types of content harmful to children will have to follow suit by July at the latest.
“We’ll be monitoring the response from industry closely. Those companies that fail to meet these new requirements can expect to face enforcement action from Ofcom.”