Ofcom has published the Protection of Children Codes of Practice and guidance, which sets out the steps service providers need to take to protect children online, including implementing age assurance by 25 July 2025 – see more information below.
Ofcom is also currently consulting on draft Guidance for a safer life online for women and girls. This consultation closes on 23 May 2025.
Who is this page for?
If you allow pornography on your online service, this page is for you. It explains what you need to know about the Online Safety Act and what you need to check to ensure you follow the rules.
You might work in the online adult industry or provide a social media service that allows pornographic content.
1. Check if the Online Safety Act applies to you
Use our tool to check if the rules are likely to apply to you, and what you can do next. Answer six short questions about your business and the service you provide, then get a result.
2. Implement measures to mitigate the risk of illegal content
Carry out your risk assessments
All services will be required to complete their illegal content risk assessment by 16 March 2025. The steps that services should take to conduct these risk assessments are set out in our Illegal Content Risk Assessment Guidance. As set out in our roadmap, published in October 2024, we will expect specific services to disclose their risk assessments to us from 31 March 2025.
You can use our tool to help you to complete a risk assessment and comply with your safety obligations.
Understand the harms most relevant to you
The harms we believe are most relevant to adult service providers are:
- Child sexual abuse offences - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 52 - 103) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 72 - 100).
- CSAM hash matching and URL detection - covered in the Illegal Content Codes of Practice (ICU9 and ICU10)
- Intimate image abuse - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 163 - 185) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 158 - 166)
- Extreme pornography - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 185 - 196) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 158 - 166)
- Adult sexual exploitation offences - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 196 - 207) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 151 - 158)
- Human trafficking offences - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 207 - 225) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 166 - 169)
Prepare to implement Codes of Practice
Providers need to implement the measures Ofcom has recommended in the Codes of Practice, and you can read a summary of our decisions. Alternatively, services can use other effective measures to protect users but will need to keep a record of the alternative measures they are taking and how they keep users safe.
3. Implement measures to protect children online
No matter whether the content on your service is covered by Part 3 or Part 5 of the Act, you must use highly effective age assurance measures to stop under-18s accessing pornography.
Services that publish or produce pornography are covered by a set of measures under Part 5 of the Online Safety Act. We anticipate the types of service covered by these measures will include studios and paysites. These services must begin taking steps immediately to introduce robust age checks, in line with our published guidance. These services must now implement highly effective age assurance.
- Read our statement and quick guide. The sections most relevant to you are:
Comply with children's safety duties
All user-to-user and search services are covered by a set of measures under Part 3 of the Online Safety Act. We anticipate the types of services will include tube, cam and fan sites. These services must have carried out children’s access assessments by 16 April 2025 to determine whether they are likely to be accessed by children. Only services that already have highly effective age assurance in place can conclude that they cannot be accessed by children.
If your service allows pornography, you must implement highly effective age assurance by 25 July 2025.
- Read our statement on Age Assurance and Children’s Access. We have also provided a quick guide for this. The sections most relevant to you are:
- Read our Protection of Children Codes and children’s risk assessment guidance. This outlines that as a service regulated under Part 3 of the Act, which allows pornography, you must:
- have already carried out your children’s access assessment which was due to be completed by 16 April 2025.
- implement highly effective age assurance to stop children normally encountering pornographic content on your service by 25 July 2025.
If you implement highly effective age assurance only for part of your service, you will need to undertake a children’s risk assessment for the parts that remain accessible to children by 24 July 2025. This will tell you the steps you should take to protect children against other types of harmful content, on the parts of your service not restricted by age assurance (for example, on a non-explicit tour accessible before the age check).
If you implement highly effective age assurance for the whole of your service by 25 July 2025, you do not need to conduct a children’s risk assessment. You should conduct a new children’s access assessment at this point, recording the evidence that your age assurance process is effective at preventing under-18s from accessing pornography. The children’s access assessment must be repeated annually, or sooner if there is evidence of reduced effectiveness of your age assurance process.
4. Stay in touch and up to date
Sign up to Ofcom’s Online Safety Briefing newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when we publish updates on our online safety work.
Want to know more? You can get in touch with the Porn Supervision team via email. We may not respond to every query but may update our website with more advice.