Statement published 26 February 2025
Ofcom is the online safety regulator in the UK. The Online Safety Act 2023 (‘the Act’) gives Ofcom powers to require and obtain information we need for the purposes of exercising, or deciding whether to exercise, our online safety duties and functions. We are issuing guidance to help services and other stakeholders, to understand when and how we might use these powers.
What we have decided – in brief
We have decided to introduce guidance for service providers and other stakeholders about the use of our information gathering powers under the Act. Our Guidance explains when and how we might exercise our powers. It is intended to be flexible to allow us to consider the individual circumstances in which we might use our powers, and to inform all stakeholders about the factors we may take into account when deciding whether to exercise them or not. It also explains the legal duties imposed on regulated services and other third parties in relation to information gathering and sets out our expectations on how services or other third parties should respond when we exercise our information gathering powers.
There was broad support for our draft Guidance. However, many respondents raised concerns or requested clarification in relation to our information gathering activities. For the reasons explained more fully in the Statement, we have decided to make some changes to our Guidance to address some of these comments. The key changes are:
- We provide more information about the protections the Act provides in relation to Ofcom’s disclosure to overseas regulators.
- We provide further detail about when and how we will use our powers to require tests or demonstrations, including the use of datasets for this purpose, and other general mechanics of some of the powers, such as Remote Viewing. We also provide further detail about our approach to user privacy and the security of stakeholders’ systems in connection with these powers.
We have also:
- Made some minor changes to our Guidance on the Coroner’s Information Notice Power based on our recent experience of exercising this power.
- Made certain changes to mirror the approach taken in our General Policy on Information Gathering, which we published in December 2024.