Ofcom has announced that it is investigating Duplanto Ltd, which runs a porn site, in relation to compliance with new age-check requirements under the Online Safety Act.
Since 25 July, sites that allow users to upload pornographic content have been required to use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from accessing that material. We have been closely scrutinising companies’ compliance since this requirement came into force.
Our investigation into Duplanto Ltd is one of five live investigations into porn site providers relating to age checks, following the four investigations we announced last month.
These investigations cover 35 websites collectively, which is in addition to Ofcom’s 11 investigations relating to other areas of online safety.
Expanding two existing investigations
We are also expanding the scope of two existing investigations, into AVS Group Limited and Kick Online Entertainment S.A.
As well as investigating their compliance with the requirement to introduce age checks for pornographic content, we are now investigating their failure to respond to statutory information notices from Ofcom.
Next steps
We are now gathering and analysing evidence to see whether our rules have been broken. If our assessment indicates they have, we will issue provisional notices of contravention to companies, who can then make representations on our findings, before we make our final decisions.
We will provide updates on these investigations as soon as possible.