A pornography company that runs 18 adult websites has been fined £1m by the watchdog Ofcom for not having strong enough age checks, in the largest fine yet under the UK’s Online Safety Act.
The Belize-based AVS Group has been hit with the punishment, plus a further £50,000 for failing to respond to information requests.
It is the third time that the internet and communications watchdog has fined a company in relation to the Online Safety Act, which brought into force strict age-checking requirements in July.
While AVS has implemented what it claims is an age verification regime, the regulator’s investigation did not deem it to be highly effective.
The company now has 72 hours to introduce age checks that Ofcom will view as effective or face a penalty of £1,000 a day. This is on top of a £300 daily penalty until it responds to requests for information or for a maximum of 60 days.
Ofcom has opened investigations into 92 online services since the new rules were introduced. It is prioritising sites with millions of monthly UK visitors and, according to the level of harm that they may pose.
Oliver Griffiths, group director of online safety at Ofcom, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 the fine was part of a “broader tide turning” in cleaning up platforms, including the “wholesale” adoption of age checks across pornography sites tackling child sexual abuse material.
Griffiths added that more than 90 websites were still under investigation for potential breaches of the act, including 83 pornography sites, and further fines were imminent.
Ofcom also said one major social media company, which it did not name, may face formal action if it did not improve its compliance procedures. The unnamed platform has submitted inadequate risk assessments, where a website must gauge the risk of illegal content such as fraud and illegal pornography appearing in front of users.
“We have gone back and told them they have to do a reassessment,” said Griffiths. “If they haven’t taken this seriously again then we will be going straight into enforcement.”
Ofcom also revealed it is reviewing an unnamed major platform’s systems for taking down illegal terror and hate content, including antisemitic and anti-Muslim material, and could take enforcement action.
The Online Safety Act brought in a new set of laws aimed at protecting children and adults from harmful content, with breaches of the act carrying the potential punishment of a fine of £18m or 10% of annual revenue – or being shut down in the UK.
More than half of the top 100 most popular adult services in the UK had introduced age checks since the new rules came into force in July, as well as social media platforms such as X, TikTok and Reddit, the regulator said. Griffiths acknowledged a surge in use of virtual private networks [VPNs], which allow people to circumvent a country’s restrictions on viewing certain websites, from 600,000 people to more than 1 million when age checks came in, but said the number was now “significantly” under 1 million.
“There has been some increase [in VPN use] but not wholesale and there’s been some interesting research … showing that it doesn’t seem like children are the big pickup in those numbers,” he said.
The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said: “Since the enforcement of the Online Safety Act, platforms have finally started taking responsibility for protecting children and removing illegal and hateful content.
“Ofcom has the government’s full backing to use all its powers to ensure that services put users’ safety first. Keeping children safe online is this government’s and my personal priority.”
