Porn company fined £1m over inadequate age checks

Ofcom has fined a porn company £1m for failing to put in place sufficiently robust age checks - the biggest penalty it has imposed so far under the Online Safety Act.

The Act makes it a legal requirement for websites that host pornographic material to put in place what the regulator determines to be "highly effective age assurance" to prevent children from being able to easily access explicit content.

Ofcom said AVS Group Ltd, which runs 18 adult websites, had failed to do this, so was being fined £1m, plus £50,000 for failing to respond to information requests.

AVS must now implement highly effective age assurance within 72 hours or face a daily additional penalty of £1,000 a day.

In addition to the AVS fine, Ofcom also announced that one "major social media company" was going through compliance remediation with its enforcement team.

The regulator has not named the platform but says there may be formal action if it does not see sufficient improvement soon.

Ofcom said the fine showed the "tide on online safety" was beginning to turn.

"This year has seen important changes for people, with new measures across many sites and apps now better protecting children from harmful content," said Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's online safety group director.

"But we need to see much more from tech companies next year and we'll use our full powers if they fall short," he added.

Ofcom has already started issuing fines to some companies for not implementing proper age verification, including deepfake "nudify" applications.

However, online message board 4Chan has so far refused to comply with a £20,000 fine issued by Ofcom over the summer.

The Online Safety Act is being implemented in phases, and is intended to prevent past practices which Ofcom described as online platforms being "unregulated, unaccountable and often unwilling to prioritise people's safety over profits".

Tougher age checks for porn websites were introduced in July, though some people have pointed out these could be easily avoided with a virtual private network (VPN), which reroutes internet traffic.

In October, Pornhub's parent company told BBC News it had seen a 77% drop in UK visitors since the age checks had come in.

Baroness Beeban Kidron, founder of 5Rights Foundation, told the Today programme the fines were "nothing" to tech firms.

"Business disruption is everything," she said.

"Unless we're prepared to use the law, they're not really doing what Parliament asked them to do.

"We need a whole different attitude about the level of intensity and robustness from the regulator to say - we've got the law and we're using it."

Also introduced this year were tougher guidelines on ensuring the internet was safer for women and girls, with Ofcom vowing to name and shame platforms that did not comply.

Critics say the Act needs to be toughened to make the internet safer, particularly for women and girls.

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