- Ofcom enforcement drives significant improvements in tackling child sexual abuse imagery
- Action against service providers which fail to engage – including £20,000 fine against 4chan
- Sites that have restricted UK users’ access remain on Ofcom’s watchlist
Ofcom has today provided an update on our enforcement activity under the Online Safety Act.
Since March 2025, when the first of our online safety Codes became enforceable, we have launched five enforcement programmes and opened 21 investigations into the providers of 69 sites and apps.
Today, we are issuing updates on 11 of those investigations.
File-sharing services now using automated tech to tackle CSAM following Ofcom enforcement
Earlier this year, Ofcom launched an enforcement programme to assess the safety measures being taken by file-sharing services, which are frequently exploited by offenders to distribute child sexual abuse material (CSAM) at scale. The spread of this material causes devastating harm to victims and remains one of the gravest online safety challenges.
Through this programme, we identified serious compliance concerns with two services – 1Fichier.com and Gofile.io. Both providers engaged constructively with Ofcom and committed to strengthening their protections.
As a result, they have now deployed perceptual hash-matching technology – a powerful automated tool that can detect and swiftly remove CSAM before it spreads further. This is one of the core safety measures set out in our illegal harms Codes, and its adoption marks a significant step forward in reducing the availability of this egregious material online.
Consequently, Ofcom will not be taking further action against either service at this time. But our work does not stop here: we will continue to hold services to account and ensure that robust safeguards are in place to protect children and prevent offenders from exploiting these platforms.
Clamping down on providers that ignore legally-binding information requests
Gathering accurate information from regulated companies is fundamental to our job of making life safer online for users in the UK. To assess and monitor industry compliance with their safety duties, we routinely issue formal information requests. Firms are required, by law, to respond to all such requests from Ofcom in an accurate, complete and timely way.
The provider of 4chan has not responded to our request for a copy of its illegal harms risk assessment,[1] nor a second request relating to its qualifying worldwide revenue. As a result, Ofcom has fined 4chan £20,000.[2] We will also impose a daily penalty of £100 per day, starting from tomorrow, for either 60 days or until 4chan provides us with this information, whichever is sooner.[3]
We have also today issued two provisional decisions against file-sharing service Im.ge[4] and pornography service provider AVS Group Ltd[5] for similar failures to respond to statutory information requests.
Both providers now have an opportunity to make representations on our findings, before we make our final decisions.[6]
Additionally, we have provisionally decided that AVS is failing to comply with its duty to put highly effective age checks in place to protect children from encountering pornography.
We have also expanded the scope of our investigation into pornography service provider Youngtek Solutions Ltd, to investigate whether it has failed to respond adequately to a statutory information request, which we issued as part of our investigation into their use of age assurance to prevent children from encountering pornographic content.
Monitoring services which take steps to stop UK users from accessing them
In response to our enforcement action, providers of some services have taken steps to prevent people in the UK from accessing their sites – such as by ‘geoblocking’ access from UK IP addresses – instead of implementing the safety measures under our Codes. This has significantly reduced the likelihood that people in the UK will be exposed to any illegal or harmful content.
Four file-sharing services investigated under our CSAM enforcement programme – Krakenfiles, Nippydrive, Nippyshare, Nippyspace – have taken this approach in response to our investigations, and as a result we have decided to close these cases.
We will continue to monitor their availability in the UK and reserve the right to re-open our investigations if we have reason to do so. We are pursuing further lines of enquiry against file-sharing services Nippybox and Yolobit and these investigations remain ongoing.
Similarly, an online suicide forum – the target of our first investigation under the Online Safety Act – responded to our enforcement proceedings against it by implementing a geoblock to restrict access by people with UK IP addresses.
Following further engagement with the service, it later removed messaging from the landing page for UK users that promoted ways to circumvent the block. Ofcom is clear that services who choose to block access by people in the UK must not encourage or promote ways to avoid these restrictions.
This forum remains on Ofcom’s watchlist and our investigation remains open while we check that the block is maintained and that the forum does not encourage or direct UK users to get around it.
More information on jurisdiction and our approach to enforcement in cases where services choose to restrict access to UK users is available on our website.
Suzanne Cater, Director of Enforcement at Ofcom, said: “Today sends a clear message that any service which flagrantly fails to engage with Ofcom and their duties under the Online Safety Act can expect to face robust enforcement action.
“We’re also seeing some services take steps to introduce improved safety measures as a direct result of our enforcement action. Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK users remain on our watchlist as we continue to monitor their availability to UK users.”
Notes to editors:
- In March 2025, duties came into force under the UK’s Online Safety Act that mean online service providers must assess the risk of people in the UK encountering illegal content and activity on their sites and apps, remove it quickly when they become aware of it, and take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of UK users seeing it in the first place.
- 4chan has until 13 November to pay the £20,000 fine, which will be passed on to HM Treasury.
- We continue to investigate 4chan’s compliance with duties to protect UK users from illegal harms.
- This falls under our enforcement programme to assess the safety measures being taken by file-sharing services to prevent offenders from disseminating child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
- This falls under our enforcement programme to check providers’ compliance with their duties to put highly effective age checks in place to protect children from encountering pornography.
- UK law sets out the process Ofcom must follow when investigating an individual provider and deciding whether it has failed to comply with its legal obligations.
