Websites and platforms hosting pornographic content in the UK must have “robust age verification for users by July at the latest”, according to the new Industry Guidance on highly effective age assurance recently issued by Ofcom.

The regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, has taken this decision under the Online Safety Act (OSA). The aim is “to prevent children from encountering online pornography and protect them from other types of harmful content”.

“For too long, many online services which allow porn and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children are accessing their services”, said Ofcom chief executive, Melanie Dawes. “Today, that starts to change”.

Estimates are that approximately 14 million people watch online pornography in the UK, and the average age at which young people first see explicit material online is 13.

“The measures we are proposing will help shield children from accessing this type of content and avoid putting companies at risk of hefty penalties”, pointed out Dawes.

Age verification methods

Ofcom has set out what it calls a “non-exhaustive list of methods” that websites must implement to have a “highly effective age verification”, which includes:

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  Open banking

  
  


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  Photo ID matching

  
  


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  Facial age estimation

  
  


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  Mobile network operator age checks

  
  


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  Credit card checks

  
  


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  Digital identity services

  
  

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  Email-based age estimation

  
  

It also states that self-declaration of age is not acceptable. Furthermore, “pornographic content must not be visible to users before, or during, the process of completing an age check”.

Social media

In addition to this regulation, the Industry Guidance stipulates that by July 2025 “all user-to-user and social media services must carry out a children’s access assessment to establish if their service, or part of their service, is likely to be accessed by children”.

After that, they will “need to implement measures to protect children on their services, i to address the risks of harm identified. These measures may also include introducing age checks to determine which of their users are under-18 and protect them from harmful content”.

Close monitoring

The measure has raised concerns about data protection, but Ofcom pointed out that “our approach also takes care to ensure that privacy rights are protected and that adults can still access legal pornography”.

“We willl be monitoring the response from industry closely. Those companies that fail to meet these new requirements can expect to face enforcement action from Ofcom”, warned Dawes.

The media regulator has the power to block access to non-compliant websites, with fines of up to £18 million or 10% of annual global revenues.

Christian voices

The announcement of this Industry Guidance follows years of debate, in wich religious grroups have raised their voices and campaignedfor stricter controls on online pornography access.

When the UK government announced in 2022 that it would be madatory for porn sites to use age verification systems, Ross Hendry, of the Christian charity CARE, pointed out that “age checks on porn sites should have been in place years ago […] Tens-of-thousands of children have stumbled across and continue to stumble across porn. A just society does not allow this to happen”.

For the Christian Institute, the announcement “is a significant, but long overdue step in the right direction”.

You can read more about what Christians in the UK and all over Europe have said about the age verification for porn sites here.

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