Porn company fined £1m over inadequate age checks

Ofcom fined a porn company £1 million for not carrying out robust enough age checks; This is the largest penalty it has ever imposed under the Online Safety Act.

The law makes it a legal requirement for websites hosting pornographic material to put in place what the regulator has determined to be “highly effective age safeguards” to prevent children from being able to easily access sexually explicit content.

Ofcom said AVS Group Ltd, which operates 18 adult websites, failed to do so and was fined £1 million plus £50,000 for failing to respond to requests for information.

AVS must now implement highly effective age assurance within 72 hours or face additional fines of £1,000 per day.

In addition to the AVS fine, Ofcom also announced that a “major social media company” was undergoing a compliance improvement process with its enforcement team.

The regulator did not name the platform but says official action may be taken if sufficient progress is not seen soon.

Ofcom said the penalty showed the “task on online safety” was starting to change.

“This year we’ve seen significant changes for people, with new measures on many sites and apps now better protecting children from harmful content,” said Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom’s group director for online safety.

“But we need to see a lot more from tech companies next year, and we will pull out all the stops if they fall short,” he added.

Ofcom has already started fining some companies for not implementing proper age verification. including deepfake “nudification” applications.

But online message board 4Chan so far he has refused to comply He was fined £20,000 by Ofcom over the summer.

The Online Safety Act is being implemented in phases and aims to prevent past practices of what Ofcom describes as online platforms being “unregulated, unaccountable and often unwilling to put people’s safety ahead of profits”.

Stricter age checks for porn websites were introduced in July, but some people have noted that these can be easily avoided with a virtual private network (VPN) that redirects internet traffic.

In October, Pornhub’s parent company told BBC News: had seen a 77% decrease The number of visitors to the UK has increased since age checks were introduced.

Baroness Beeban Kidron, founder of the 5Rights Foundation, told the Today program that fines were “nothing” for tech firms.

“Business interruption is everything,” he said.

“Unless we are prepared to use the law, they are not actually doing what Parliament wants them to do.

“We need the regulator to take a completely different stance on the level of intensity and robustness; we have the law and we use it.”

There were also stricter rules introduced this year. Making the internet safer for women and girlsOfcom has vowed to name and shame platforms that fail to comply.

Critics say the Act needs to be strengthened to make the internet safer, especially for women and girls.