Ofcom requires pornography services to implement age checks by July 2025

Adults accessing pornography services online should expect age verification checks from July 2025 at the very latest based on timetable Ofcom has published for its implementation of the Online Safety Act. Sites that offer pornographic content to UK users who do not implement age verification will see enforcement action taken by Ofcom and for overseas based sites that may be the site being blocked from being accessed in the UK.

For too long, many online services which allow porn and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children are accessing their services. Either they don’t ask or, when they do, the checks are minimal and easy to avoid. That means companies have effectively been treating all users as if they’re adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content. Today, this starts to change.

As age checks start to roll out in the coming months, adults will start to notice a difference in how they access certain online services. Services which host their own pornography must start to introduce age checks immediately, while other user-to-user services – including social media – which allow pornography and certain other types of content harmful to children will have to follow suit by July at the latest.

We’ll be monitoring the response from industry closely. Those companies that fail to meet these new requirements can expect to face enforcement action from Ofcom

Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s Chief Executive

This move to age verification to protect children is not confined to the UK, EU countries are expected to have systems in place for 2026 with very similar legislation to the Online Safety Act in the UK. One difference seems to be the implementation e.g. in Spain there seems to be a centrally ran digital ID system that sites can query to confirm the age of a user.

Its impossible to talk about one implementation for the UK as Ofcom is saying various methods will be acceptable sets setting “out a non-exhaustive list of methods that we consider are capable of being highly effective. They include: open banking, photo ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile network operator age checks, credit card checks, digital identity services and email-based age estimation.” This means that adults may encounter a wide range of checking methods leading to confusion, though when age verification got close to implementation previously there was a single large player involved.

One downside to increasing use of age verification and relying on a wide range of different services to support it is that people will be asked to share a wide variety of documents and this may decrease online safety for adults, as scammers are going to see this surge in poeple sharing documentation and set-up clever phishing sites. Waving your photo id at someone in a supermarket is to prove you are of age to buy alcohol is very different to showing it to your webcam with no actual knowledge about what will happen to any image of that document captured. 

This is not just about pornography, the Online Safety Act also requires that services that are likely to be accessed by children will need to carry out a risk assessment by July 2025 and introduce measures to protect children if a risk is determined. This may include introducing age checks, so things like search engines, social media sites and online forums will all need to consider what to do. 

While there is a need to stop the exposure of children to pornography and putting it all behind a big 18 and over sign online will stop those who might have accidentally found it but for those with curiosity the lure of a overseas sites that don’t have age verification will attract them and even if Ofcom is very active at blocking porn sites that don’t comply with age verification legislation there will be a rise in the use of VPN and the example of the explosion in VPN use in US states such as Florida suggest that even adults may opt for a VPN. The age verification rules forbid sites from promoting the use of VPN for getting around age checks, but it seems a safe bet given how poorly social media sites police existing adverts that the next few months will see a rise in VPN service adverts for this exact purpose.