Statement: New priority offences - serious self-harm and cyberflashing

Ofcom is publishing a statement that sets out changes to the Illegal Harms regulatory documents and guidance under the Online Safety Act. In December 2025, the government created two new priority offences under the Act: encouraging or assisting serious-self harm, and cyberflashing. This Statement sets out the changes to our regulatory documents and guidance to reflect this change in law.

This statement sets out our decisions to combine the offence of encouraging or assisting suicide and the offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm into a single kind of illegal harm, 'suicide and self-harm', and to include cyberflashing as a new, and separate, kind of illegal harm. As a result, providers of regulated services must review and update their illegal content risk assessments, to assess the risks of the new kinds of illegal harm on their service. Providers need to assess both suicide and self-harm and assign one overall risk level for 'suicide and self-harm', and separately risk assess for cyberflashing.  

The amendments to the Codes will be implemented separately. Subject to them completing the Parliamentary process, providers will need to take the safety measures set out in the Codes or use other effective measures to protect users from illegal content and activity. We have published draft consolidated versions of the Codes. 

Taken together, these updates strengthen protections for users from the risks of harm arising from self-harm and cyberflashing, for example, by extending existing safety measures to apply to services at risk of these harms. The updates are designed to improve how services identify, assess and mitigate risks, and will have a significant impact on user safety across a range of online services.  

We have also today published updated versions of the following, which can be found here: 

•        The Risk Assessment Guidance and Risk Profiles; 
•        The Illegal Harms Register of Risks;
•        The Illegal Content Judgements Guidance; and
•        The Record Keeping and Review Guidance.

Please note, we have also taken the opportunity to make a minor amendment to clarify the text in the chapter on 'Sexual exploitation of adults' in the Register of Risks (paragraph 8.49).