Ofcom is consulting on changes we propose to make to the Illegal Harms regulatory documents and guidance under the Online Safety Act. In December 2025, the government created two new priority offences under the Act: encouraging or assisting serious self-harm, and cyberflashing. Both were previously non-priority offences under the Act. This means we need to update our regulatory documents and guidance to reflect this change in the law.
We are proposing updates across the Illegal Harms regulatory documents to reflect the change in the law. These are the Risk Assessment Guidance and Risk Profiles, Register of Risks, Codes of Practice, Illegal Content Judgements Guidance and Record Keeping and Review Guidance.
We are proposing to combine the two priority offences of encouraging or assisting suicide and encouraging or assisting serious self-harm into a single kind of illegal harm which providers must risk assess: “suicide and self-harm”. This is because of the similar ways these harms manifest online and the common risk factors most strongly associated with these harms. This would mean providers should assess their risks of both kinds of content and assign an overall risk level for suicide and self-harm. We are also proposing to introduce cyberflashing as a new kind of priority illegal harm that providers must risk assess separately.
To support these changes, we propose to update the Register of Risks with new evidence on self-harm and cyberflashing. We are proposing to update the User-to-User Risk Profile to include risk factors most strongly associated with cyberflashing and with suicide and self-harm, and to introduce a reference to self-harm in the Search Risk Profile. These changes would amount to “significant changes” to the risk profiles, meaning providers would need to update their Illegal Content Risk Assessments. Providers would be required to take these updated risk factors into account when conducting their risk assessments. The risk levels assigned will determine which recommended measures apply.
While we are not at this stage consulting on new Codes measures, we are proposing to update the Illegal Content Codes of Practice to ensure existing measures apply to cyberflashing and suicide and self-harm in the same way as to other priority illegal harms where relevant. Because suicide and self-harm would become a single kind of illegal harm under our proposals, measures that apply specifically to suicide content or to services at risk of suicide would also apply to self-harm content and services at risk of self-harm. This means that the measures we proposed in the April 2025 User Controls Consultation and June 2025 Additional Safety Measures Consultation would (if we decide to make them) also apply to self-harm content and services at risk of self-harm. We are also proposing that the measure on blocking and muting (ICU J1) should apply to services at risk of cyberflashing.
Responding to our consultation
Please respond to this consultation no later than 5pm on Friday 24 April 2026 by completing the online response form.
Alternatively, you can email your response to NewPriorityOffences@Ofcom.org.uk. If you email, please provide contact details so that we can contact you about your response.