Ofcom publish plans to age-gate porn

Dec. 5, 2023 /Security/ — For years, the Government has been trying to force porn companies to verify the age of their users. This year, they finally got what they wanted after passing the Online Safety Act.

The Online Safety Act is the second time they have passed legislation requiring age checks, after the Digital Economy Act 2017 failed to work.

Today, Ofcom published their guidelines on how this might work in practice.

Understandably, politicians want to prevent children from seeing porn online, but age verification brings a whole set of new problems, including sensitive personal data being breached, collected, shared, or sold.

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Around 26 million people in the UK have viewed adult websites, so vast numbers of people could be exposed to increased risks of fraud, scamming and blackmail if their data falls into the wrong hands.
We are concerned that Ofcom is relying on data protection law and the ICO to protect user privacy. As they stand, our data protection laws are insufficient for processing such sensitive data.

The Government is also trying to weaken data protection rights through the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill, which is currently going through Parliament. This Bill will undermine the independence of the ICO – already one of the weakest data regulators in Europe.

Ofcom needs to recognize that the adult industry has been responsible for repeated user data breaches, and their proposals risk creating a ‘scammers paradise’. They need to set high privacy standards for any systems of age verification.

In other countries, such as Australia, regulators have sought to introduce these measures but later rejected them over concerns about privacy and security.

Read what ORG had to say about Ofcom’s proposals in the Guardian, BBC, Financial Times and the Verge.

Ofcom’s consultations are complicated and time-consuming to engage with but If you have the time and capability, we would encourage you to submit replies.

Another practical way you can help is to join ORG today.

Increasing our membership would help us fund a member of staff to undertake this work. We are fighting to protect millions of people’s privacy, but we need your help.

Join ORG today!

Thank you for supporting digital rights.

Jim Killock
Executive Director
Open Rights Group