Ofcom has today launched investigations into the providers of two pornography sites to determine their compliance with age-check rules under the UK’s Online Safety Act.
Robust age checks are a cornerstone of the Online Safety Act. Sites that host pornographic material must use ‘highly effective’ age-checks to determine whether a particular user is over 18, in order to prevent children from readily accessing that content.
We have opened investigations into the providers of pimpbunny.com and kemono.cr. Our investigations will examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that the providers have failed, or are failing, to comply with these duties under the Online Safety Act.
We have prioritised action against these providers based on the risk of harm posed by the services they operate. We have taken particular account of their user numbers, including where we have seen significant increases in their user traffic since age-check laws came into force last summer.
Separately, we have published our provisional decision into fapello.com, setting out that we have reasonable grounds to believe the provider of the service is in breach of their duties under the Online Safety Act. Fapello now has the opportunity to make representations to Ofcom, which will be carefully considered before we reach a final decision.
And finally, we are announcing an expansion to our ongoing investigation into the provider of xgroovy to determine whether they have also failed to adequately respond to Ofcom’s formal requests for information.
We will provide an update on these investigations in due course.