Protecting children

The Online Safety Act introduces new rules for providers of online user-to-user, search and pornography services, to help keep people in the UK safe from content which is illegal in the UK, and to protect children from the most harmful content such as pornography, suicide and self-harm material.

Ofcom is opening an enforcement programme into age assurance measures across the adult sector, which will initially focus on regulated providers’ compliance with the Part 5 duties.

Providers of online pornography are implementing highly effective age assurance across thousands of sites, in response to Ofcom’s enforcement programme in this area.

Investigation into whether Fenix, provider of OnlyFans, failed to provide complete and accurate responses to statutory information requests. The investigation concerned OnlyFans’ compliance with its statutory obligations under sections 368Y(3)(b) and (c), 368Z10(6), and 368Z1(2) of the Act.

Ofcom has today fined the provider of OnlyFans, Fenix International Limited, £1.05 million for failing to accurately respond to formal requests for information about its age assurance measures on the platform.

A new report from Ofcom takes stock of how popular video-sharing platforms are protecting children from accessing potentially harmful videos.

How TikTok, Twitch and Snap try to prevent children from watching potentially harmful videos.

Ofcom has opened a programme of work, or ‘enforcement programme’, to assess the measures being taken by providers of file-sharing and file-storage services that present particular risks of harm to UK users from image-based CSAM to ensure users do not encounter, and offenders are not able to disseminate, such content on their services.

From today, online platforms must start putting in place measures to protect people in the UK from criminal activity, while Ofcom has launched its latest enforcement programme to assess industry compliance.

Ofcom has today proposed concrete measures that tech firms should take to tackle online harms against women and girls, setting a new and ambitious standard for their online safety.