Category: Online Safety

Ofcom has opened a consultation on super-complaints under the Online Safety Act, including the criteria for the bodies which will be able to submit them to the regulator. What are super-complaints? They are a type of complaint which eligible organisations are able to make to Ofcom which places specific requirements on Ofcom to respond within […]

The Online Safety Act that gained Royal Assent in 2023 is keeping Ofcom busy. The latest company to be added to the growing list of firms under investigation is Duplanto Ltd. This brings the total to five investigations underway looking into porn site providers with relation to age checks. With some firms running multiple sites […]

The Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has told BBC Newsnight that she believes VPNs should be required to verify the age of anyone subscribing to their service. This follows the massive uptake of VPN services following the Online Safety Act’s age verification requirements kicking in. The website 4chan yesterday told Ofcom where to stick […]

The battle is warming up with regards to the Online Safety Act, as 4chan has responded to the provisional notice of contravention that Ofcom issued to the sites operator recently. “Provisional Decision: Information Notice duties In accordance with section 130 of the Online Safety Act 2023, we have today issued 4chan Community Support LLC with […]

We’ve written about the Online Safety Act and the requirement for sites to carry out age verification for some times of content. This was communicated as preventing kids accessing adult content, as well as how use of VPNs has skyrocketed since as users are refusing to use age verification services that risk their privacy. There’s […]

Ofcom has this morning announced it has launched investigations into 34 adult content websites which it believes are failing to comply with the age verification requirements of Section 12 of the Online Safety Act which took effect last week. As of Friday, the rules require such adult content websites to use ‘highly effective age assurance’ […]

We’ve been rather critical of the way the Online Safety Act enforces are restrictions due to their privacy impact on users and the ease by which they can be bypassed which may provide very limited benefits with potentially significant costs. Research commissioned by EE shows that just over half of parents feel they have the […]

A key part of the Online Safety Act took effect on Friday, requiring certain websites (such as those with adult content) to carry out reliable age verification checks before allowing access to users. This has resulted in a kind of cookie-consent type banner appearing before loading pages, requiring the user to prove they are over […]

The deadline to offering age verification checks to protect children from pornography and other content considered harmful online is just hours away, coming into effect on Friday 25th July. Not every website online will need to use age verification generally it is confined to sites and services that allow pornography or places that allow dissemination […]

Scam phone calls are still common place and one way scammers are gaining trust is to imitate a UK mobile phone, as it appears we are more willing to answer those calls. Ofcom is proposing changes to how people in the UK are protected from the imitation of a UK mobile number. This follows up […]