Providers of online pornography are implementing highly effective age assurance across thousands of sites, in response to Ofcom’s enforcement programme in this area.
Earlier this year, Ofcom wrote to hundreds of providers, collectively covering thousands of sites that publish their own pornographic content, informing them of their new obligations under Part 5 of the Online Safety Act to implement highly effective age assurance to prevent children from accessing this material.
So far, we have had positive engagement from across the sector and a number of providers have implemented highly effective age assurance in response to our enforcement programme. We are currently reviewing compliance plans and implementation timescales for other services in scope of these duties.
We are also assessing the age assurance measures of providers who have not responded, and a number of services have been referred to our enforcement team, who will consider in the coming weeks whether formal enforcement action is appropriate.
Details of any new investigations will be published on our website.
By July 2025, all services that allow pornography – including sites that allow user-generated pornographic content (‘Part 3 services’) – will need to have highly effective age-checks in place to protect children from accessing it.