Home Tech Stricter age controls to come into force for online porn sites in the UK

Stricter age controls to come into force for online porn sites in the UK

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Stricter age controls to come into force for online porn sites in the UK

Users accessing online pornography in the UK could soon be required to have their faces scanned, under measures announced by Ofcom to prevent children from viewing the material.

Enforcement guidelines released Thursday, which will apply to social media platforms as well as sites like Onlyfans and Pornhub, stipulate that children will no longer be able to simply claim to be 18 to view pornography online.

The communications watchdog also said adults would have to start proving their age, with methods including facial age estimation, credit card checks or matching with photo ID.

Requirements for “highly effective” age controls will come into effect this spring for several thousand services that display or publish their own pornographic content. The rules will affect so-called peer-to-peer and social networking services in July, with possible penalties for non-compliance, including fines of up to 10% of a company’s turnover.

The average age that children in England first encounter pornography is 13, and one in 10 view it even as young as nine, according to investigation from the children’s commissioner for England, who has said that depictions of “degradation, sexual coercion, assault and exploitation are common”.

Ofcom has not set a level at which age verification software must be effective (for example, 90%), but said it may do so in the future as it continues to move forward to enforce the Online Safety Act.

“For too long, many online services that allow pornography and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children access their services,” said Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom. “Either they don’t ask or, when they do, the controls are minimal and easy to avoid. That means companies have been treating all users as if they were adults, leaving children potentially exposed to pornography and other types of harmful content. Today this is beginning to change.”

Since last June, Elon Musk’s X site has allowed “consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior.” Meta’s Instagram platform, overseen by Mark Zuckerberg, prohibits nudity.

Almudena Lara, Ofcom’s policy director responsible for child protection, said: “It doesn’t matter where you are, who your political allies are – if you operate in the UK you must comply with their rules.

“I’m sure years from now we’ll look back and ask ourselves: How did we think it was okay for kids to be exposed to this content?”

Ofcom said a possible age verification method that would avoid the need for a facial scan uses email addresses. There are systems available that compare other services with which the address is associated (for example, utility bills and financial institutions) to estimate the age of the user.

Automated facial age estimation does not match a user’s face with an image stored in a database, but instead estimates age based on visual features and no image is stored. This type of software is already used by Onlyfans, a British-based subscription platform known for pornography.

On social media sites, “age barriers” are likely to be applied at the post level rather than when registering for the social media account.

However, with thousands of porn providers around the world, cracking down on those who flout the Online Safety Act could prove difficult.

“The challenge is that if several sites are implementing (this), but then they see that others are not doing it and nothing is happening, then they will say, ‘Hey, why am I doing it?’” Lina said. Ghazal, head of regulatory and public affairs at VerifyMy, which provides email verifications and facial age estimation. “They have a real challenge here to make sure Ofcom implements this across the board and effectively.”

The new rules also mean that sites must not allow any pornographic content to be viewable before age checks are completed. Ofcom said platforms must ensure privacy rights are respected and that adults can still access legal pornography, but said it “would not hesitate to take action and launch investigations against services that do not participate or, ultimately, “they don’t comply.”

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