SOME 34 porn sites are under investigation over concerns whether they’re following strict new UK age checks.
Media regulator Ofcom has announced its first major probe since the Online Safety Act was introduced last week.
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Some 6,000 porn sites have complied with the changes, which blocks users unless they submit a live selfie or share their ID.
The move is designed to protect children from accessing inappropriate material online.
Ofcom says it is looking into compliance of four companies, which collectively run 34 pornography sites.
They’re estimated to attract more than nine million Brits every month.
“We have opened formal investigations into whether the following providers have highly effective age checks in place to protect children from encountering pornography across 34 websites: 8579 LLC, AVS Group Ltd, Kick Online Entertainment S.A. and Trendio Ltd,” Ofcom said.
“These companies have been prioritised based on the risk of harm posed by the services they operate and their user numbers.“
Platforms that fail to comply with the rules face fines or could be banned from the UK entirely.
The measures triggered a surge in VPN downloads as some try to get around the block.
VPNs – which are used as legal privacy tools to disguise a person’s location – still dominate the top of the Apple App Store today.
The regulator has admitted that there’s no way to stop people from using VPNs.
Tech Secretary Peter Kyle recently ruled out banning VPNs, saying “adults should get behind the age verification system”.
In an update following today’s action, he added: “I strongly welcome this speedy and decisive action from Ofcom. This enforcement goes to the very heart of what the Online Safety Act is here to do – protecting children from pornographic material.
“No-one in their right mind would think it appropriate for a child to walk into a shop and freely buy a top shelf magazine – so why should we allow them to freely wander on to a website offering the same, if not more disturbing, age-inappropriate content?”
Ofcom said it expected to make further enforcement announcements in the coming months.
“Where we identify compliance failures, we can require platforms to take specific steps to come into compliance,” bosses said.
“We can also impose fines of up to £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.
“Where appropriate, in the most serious cases, we can seek a court order for business disruption measures, such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring internet service providers to block access to a site in the UK.”
THE SHOCKING STATS
Latest figures show the scale of adult content consumption online…
Ofcom stats:
- Around 8% children aged 8-14 in the UK visited an online porn site or app in a month.
- 15% of 13–14-year-olds accessed online porn in a month.
- Boys aged 13-14 are the most likely to visit a porn service, significantly more than girls the same age (19% vs 11%).
- Our research tells us that around three in ten (29%) or 13.8m UK adults use porn online.
- Pornhub is the most used site in the UK – Ofcom research says 18% (8.4m) visited it in one month.
Children’s Commissioner stats:
Of the 64% who said that they had ever seen online pornography:
- The average age at which children first see pornography is 13. By age nine, 10% had seen pornography, 27% had seen it by age 11 and half of children who had seen pornography had seen it by age 13.
- We also find that young people are frequently exposed to violent pornography, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sex acts; 79% had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18.
- Pornography is not confined to dedicated adult sites. We found that Twitter was the online platform where young people were most likely to have seen pornography.
Image credit: Getty
