UPDATE: Ofcom has published our final guidance for publishers of pornography, together with our age assurance guidance and Children’s Access Statement. In summary:
- Services that publish their own pornographic content (Part 5 services) must immediately being taking steps to ensure that children are not normally able to encounter pornography, using highly effective age assurance.
- All user-to-user and search services with a significant number of UK users must carry out a children’s access assessment by 16 April 2025.
We are also arranging a hybrid/virtual Online Safety Conference on 3-5 February 2025. This conference will include a mix of short practical information sessions and deep dive sessions into topics to support providers on their path to compliance. Register your interest for the Online Safety Conference.
Who is this page for?
If you allow pornography on your online service, this page is for you. It explains what you need to know about the Online Safety Act and what you need to check to ensure you follow the rules.
You might work in the online adult industry or provide a social media service that allows pornographic content.
1. Check if the Online Safety Act applies to you
Use our tool to check if the rules are likely to apply to you, and what you can do next. Answer six short questions about your business and the service you provide, then get a result.
2. Implement measures to mitigate the risk of illegal content
Carry out your risk assessments
All services will be required to complete their illegal content risk assessment by 16 March 2025. The steps that services should take to conduct these risk assessments are set out in our Illegal Content Risk Assessment Guidance. As set out in our roadmap, published in October 2024, we will expect specific services to disclose their risk assessments to us from 31 March 2025.
Understand the harms most relevant to you
The harms we believe are most relevant to adult service providers are:
- Child sexual abuse offences - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 52 - 103) and our illegal content judgement guidance (pages 72 - 100).
- CSAM hash matching and URL detection - covered in the Illegal Content Codes of Practice (ICU9 and ICU10)
- Intimate image abuse - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 163 - 185) and our;Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 158 - 166)
- Extreme pornography - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 185 - 196) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 158 - 166)
- Adult sexual exploitation offences - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 196 - 207) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 151 - 158)
- Human trafficking offences - covered in the Register of Risks (pages 207 - 225) and our Illegal Content Judgement Guidance (pages 166 - 169)
Prepare to implement Codes of Practice
From 17 March 2025, providers will need to either implement the measures Ofcom has recommended in the Codes of Practice, and you can read a summary of our decisions. Alternatively, services can use other effective measures to protect users but will need to keep a record of the alternative measures they are taking and how they keep users safe.
3. Implement measures to protect children online
Services that publish or produce pornography are covered by a set of measures under Part 5 of the Online Safety Act. We anticipate the types of service covered by these measures will include studios and paysites. These services must begin taking steps immediately to introduce robust age checks, in line with our published guidance.
- Read our statement and quick guide. The sections most relevant to you are:
All user to user and search services are covered by a set of measures under Part 3 of the Online Safety Act. We anticipate the types of services will include tube, cam and fan sites. These services must carry out children’s access assessments by 16 April 2025 to determine whether they are likely to be accessed by children. Services that have highly effective age assurance in place can conclude that they cannot be accessed by children.
- Read our statement on Age Assurance and Children’s Access. We have also provided a quick guide for this. The sections most relevant to you are:
Comply with children's safety duties
We will publish our Protection of Children Codes and children’s risk assessment guidance in April 2025. This means that services that are likely to be accessed by children will need to conduct a children’s risk assessment by July 2025. User-to-user services that allow pornography and are likely to be accessed by children will need to comply with the children’s safety duties and take steps to protect children in line with our Protection of Children Codes which may include age assurance.
No matter whether the content on your service is covered by Part 3 or Part 5 of the Act, you must use highly effective age assurance measures to stop under-18s accessing pornography
4. Stay in touch and up to date
Sign up to Ofcom’s Online Safety Briefing newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when we publish updates on our online safety work.
Want to know more? You can get in touch with the Porn Supervision team via email. We may not respond to every query but may update our website with more advice.