Porn provider fined £1m by Ofcom as impact of new online safety rules revealed

Ofcom has fined a pornography supplier £1m for not having robust property checks.

AVS, which runs 18 big websites, was besides fined £50,000 for not responding to accusation requests from the communications regulator.

Since July, websites and apps that big big contented person had to person age verification checks successful spot to halt young radical from seeing their content.

Days aft those rules came into force, Ofcom began investigating websites that hadn't decently complied, including AVS sites, which person millions of monthly UK users, according to the regulator.

AVS has 72 hours to present "highly effective" property verification oregon it volition beryllium fined £1,000 a time until it does.

"They said that they had property checks successful place, but they conscionable weren't bully enough," said Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's online information radical manager to Sky News' Sophy Ridge and Wilf Frost connected Thursday morning.

"They didn't person liveness checks, truthful you could clasp up a photograph of idiosyncratic other and that would get you through. But that's evidently conscionable not bully enough."

This is the 3rd institution Ofcom has fined since the caller rules came into place. The forum 4chan was the first; it was fined £20,000 successful October.

The fines came arsenic Ofcom released caller information astir the interaction of their caller online information rules.

Almost fractional - 47% - of children aged 8 to 17 encountered an property cheque online erstwhile trying to entree age-restricted contented aft the July deadline compared to 30% before, according to the caller report.

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More than fractional - 58% - of parents judge the measures are already improving the information of UK children online, portion 36% noticed a imaginable interaction connected their child's online activity, according to the regulator's statistics.

The caller rules proved controversial, however.

Some accidental the property verification checks are excessively casual to bypass, portion others reason they are a information risk, arsenic users usually person to upload a representation of their look to a third-party website.

The exertion caput Liz Kendall said Ofcom has the government's "full backing" to usage each of its powers successful enforcing the rules.

"Since the enforcement of the Online Safety Act, platforms person yet started taking work for protecting children and removing amerciable and hateful content," she said.