UPDATE: Ofcom has published our illegal harms statement, which sets out what actions online service providers need to take to mitigate the risk of illegal harms online - see more information below. For more information on timeframes for relevant parts of the Online Safety Act coming into force for different categories of pornography services see our blog post about our updated roadmap.
Who is this page for?
If you allow pornography on your online service, this page is for you. It explains what you need to know about the Online Safety Act and what you need to check to ensure you follow the rules.
You might work in the online adult industry or provide a social media service that allows pornographic content.
Here us what you need to do
1. Check if the rules apply to you:
Use our tool to check if the rules are likely to apply to you, and what you can do next. Answer six short questions about your business and the service you provide, then get a result.
2. Start implementing measures in order to mitigate the risk of illegal content
a. Carry out your risk assessments: all services will be required to complete their illegal content risk assessment by 16 March 2025. The steps that services should take to conduct these risk assessments are set out in our Illegal Content Risk Assessment Guidance. As set out in our roadmap, published in October 2024, we will expect specific services to disclose their risk assessments to us from 31 March 2025.
b. Understand the harms most relevant to you: The harms we believe are most relevant to adult service providers are:
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- Child sexual abuse offences - Covered in the register of risks, pages 52 - 103 and our illegal content judgement guidance, pages 72 - 100.
- CSAM Hash matching and URL detection - Covered in our illegal harms code of practice ICU9 and ICU10
- Intimate image abuse - Covered in the register of risks, pages 163 - 185 and our illegal content judgement guidance, pages 158 - 166
- Extreme pornography - Covered in the register of risks pages 185 - 196 and our illegal content judgement guidance, pages 158 - 166
- Adult sexual exploitation offences - Covered in the register of risks, pages 196 - 207 and our illegal content judgement guidance, pages 151 - 158
- Human trafficking offences - Covered in the register of risks, pages 207 - 225 and our illegal content judgement guidance, pages 166 - 169
- Child sexual abuse offences - Covered in the register of risks, pages 52 - 103 and our illegal content judgement guidance, pages 72 - 100.
c. Prepare to implement Codes of practice: from 17 March 2025, providers will need to either implement the measures Ofcom has recommended in the Codes, which you can see a summary of here. Alternatively, services can use other effective measures to protect users but will need to keep a record of the alternative measures they are taking and how they keep users safe.
3. Read our proposals on…
…age assurance for user-to-user services
User-to-user services that allow pornography are covered by a set of proposals under Part 3 of the Online Safety Act.
We have provided a summary of these proposals and here are the ones most relevant to you:
Volume 3: The causes and impacts of online harms to children
- Section 7.1: Risk of harm to children of pornographic content
- Section 8.2: Guidance on the definition of pornographic content
Volume 5: What should services do?
- Section 15: Age assurance measures
Annexes
- Annex 10: Draft guidance on highly effective age assurance
…and guidance for publishers of pornography
Services that publish or produce pornography are covered by a set of proposals under Part 5 of the Online Safety Act.
Read our proposals in full or a quick guide to them.
No matter whether the content on your service is covered by Part 3 or Part 5 of the Act, you must use highly effective age assurance measures to stop under-18s accessing pornography.
4. Stay in touch and up to date
Sign up to Ofcom’s Online Safety Briefing newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when we publish updates on our online safety work.
Want to know more? You can get in touch with the Porn Supervision team here. We may not respond to every query but may update our website with more advice.