Chris Vallance & Liv McMahon
Technology reporters
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Pornhub and a number of other major adult websites have confirmed they will introduce enhanced age checks for users from next month.
Parent company Aylo says it is bringing in “government approved age assurance methods” but has not yet revealed how it will require users to prove they are over 18.
Regulator Ofcom has previously said simply clicking a button, which is all the adult site currently requires, is not enough.
Ofcom said the changes would “bring pornography into line with how we treat adult services in the real world.”
The Online Safety Act requires adult sites to introduce “robust” age checking techniques by this summer.
Approved measures include demanding photo ID or running credit card checks before users can view sexually explicit material.
“Society has long protected youngsters from products that aren’t suitable for them, from alcohol to smoking or gambling,” said Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom’s group director of online safety, in a statement.
“For too long children have been only a click away from harmful pornography online.”
Mr Griffiths said assurances from Aylo and several other porn providers, including Stripchat and Streamate, regarding the introduction of new age checks showed “change is happening”.
The regulator said its recent research indicated 8% of children aged 8-14 in the UK had visited an online porn site or app over a 28-day period.
This included about 3% of eight to nine year olds, its survey suggests.
Derek Ray-Hill, interim chief executive at the Internet Watch Foundation, warned that children’s’ exposure to online porn at a very young age, or to violent sexual material, could normalise harmful behaviour offline.
“We welcome platforms doing all they can to comply with the Online Safety Act and prevent children accessing pornography,” he said.
“We know that highly effective age assurance can play a vital role in protecting young users from accessing harmful and inappropriate material on social media and other platforms,” said Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at the NSPCC.
“It is time tech companies take responsibility for ensuring children have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we welcome the progress that Ofcom are making in this space.”
Scrutiny over child safety
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“Click away” age gates on porn sites including Pornhub have been criticised by regulators.
Pornhub is the most visited porn site in the UK and around the world, according to data from Similarweb.
It has been under scrutiny by regulators worldwide over its measures to prevent children accessing adult content.
The European Commission announced an investigation into Pornhub, along with two other adult platforms, at the end of May.
In the UK, Ofcom is probing several adult sites it believes may be failing to abide by its child safety rules.
Aylo’s vice president of brand and community Alex Kekesi said Ofcom presented a variety of flexible methods of age assurance that were less intrusive than those it had seen in other jurisdictions.
“Ofcom recognises the scale of the challenge ahead and is approaching it with thorough consideration,” she said.
The regulator’s model is “the most robust in terms of actual and meaningful protection we’ve seen to date,” she added.
“When governments and regulators engage with industry in good faith, the outcome is not just better compliance, it’s smarter, more effective solutions”.
Aylo said it would introduce the new methods to check user ages on its sites by 25 July, but so far has not spelt out what techniques it will use to verify age.
It says it will detail the measures closer to the July enforcement date, but users will be offered a range of options.
Under the Online Safety Act, providers of platforms where children could encounter porn and harmful content must have measures in place to stop them accessing it.
The Act requires this to take place chiefly through the use of technology that is “highly effective” in determining whether a user is 18.
Ofcom said in January this could include solutions such as photo ID matching, digital identity services or facial age estimation.
Porn providers that fail to meet the Act’s requirements could face enforcement action such as huge fines.
‘Greater danger’
Some experts and digital rights groups, as well as porn providers themselves, are concerned that regulators’ efforts to compel porn sites to verify the age of users could have privacy and security implications.
Civil liberties organisation the Open Rights Group is concerned the Online Safety Act age check requirements for platforms may introduce “a wide range of new cybersecurity risks for users,” or even push children towards more dangerous sites.
“Speaking as a parent I’m worried that children and young people who attempt to bypass age checks may inadvertently expose themselves to greater online harms,” said James Baker, its platform power and free expression program manager.
“These include stumbling across unregulated or underground sites, installing malware, or being targeted by exploitative actors in less moderated spaces,” he told the BBC.
“In trying to ‘protect’ them, we risk pushing them toward greater danger.”
The group said it also doubts the UK’s data protection regime or regulatory enforcement is “robust enough” to ensure user safety around possible collection of sensitive identity data or linking it to browsing habits.