For those stupid enough to hand over ID that can used to maintain a log of their porn viewing, the age/ID verification
will start by 24th July 2025. Surely it will be safer to continue porn viewing by using a VPN.
Ofcom has announced that several major providers have agrees to bring in robust methods to check users' age/ID for the first time. Ofcom Writes:
By 25 July, all sites and apps that allow pornography -- whether they are dedicated adult sites or social media, search or gaming services -- must use highly effective age checks to ensure children are not normally
able to encounter it. Online firms who publish their own pornography are already required to protect children from it, and thousands of sites have already introduced robust age checks in response.
Major porn providers operating in
the UK have confirmed to Ofcom that they will introduce effective checks by next month's deadline in order to comply with the new rules. They include PornHub, the most-visited pornographic service in the UK. Other services who are happy to be named at
this stage include BoyfriendTV, Cam4, FrolicMe, inxxx, Jerkmate, LiveHDCams, MyDirtyHobby, RedTube, Streamate, Stripchat, Tube8, and YouPorn. This represents a broad range of pornography services accessed in the UK.
Monitoring
compliance with these new duties is a priority for Ofcom. If any company fails to comply with its new duties, Ofcom can impose fines and -- in very serious cases -- apply for a court order to prevent the site or app from being available in the UK.
As part of our work enforcing the Online Safety Act, we have already launched investigations into four porn providers and won't hesitate to take further action from July. Under 18s exposed to adult content
Robust age checks are a
cornerstone of the Online Safety Act and will help protect children from harmful content. Under the Act, age assurance methods -- which include age verification, age estimation or a combination of both -- must be highly effective at correctly
determining whether a user is under 18. Highly effective age checks include credit card checks, open banking or facial age estimation.
From 25 July, all social media, search and gaming sites and apps must prevent children in the
UK from encountering harmful content including suicide, self-harm and eating-disorder content. Tech firms will have to apply the safety measures set out in our Children's Codes, or take alternative action to meet their duties, to mitigate the risks that
their services pose to children.
The riskiest services will have to use highly effective age assurance to identify which users are children. Any provider that operates a recommender system and poses a medium or high risk of
harmful content must configure their algorithms to filter out harmful content from children's feeds.
The services named today have indicated that they plan to deploy a type of age assurance solution which Ofcom said could be
capable of being highly effective in our guidance. As we noted in our guidance, the way in which these solutions are implemented in practice will be the ultimate test of whether it is compliant with the OSA
Ofcom hasn't said much
about other major porn tube sites that are not mentioned in the list. In fact most of the tube sites listed are owned by Aylo.
