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New age assurance guidelines for user-to-user and search platforms

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Ofcom’s second consultation offers early insight into new rules

New guidelines protecting children from harmful content bring search engines and user-to-user platforms a step closer to mandatory age assurance. The draft regulations from Ofcom, the UK’s online safety regulator, are open to consultation. But they provide an early glance at the tough new rules that will restrict access to content from 2025.

The proposed guidelines are Ofcom’s latest response to the Online Safety Act. Passed last year, the Act will give Britain one of the toughest online regulatory systems in the world. Social media apps, search engines and other online services will need to adopt robust age checks and stop their algorithms recommending harmful content to children.

What is harmful content?

This is the second of Ofcom’s four consultation exercises on finalising the regulations that will flesh out the Act’s skeleton framework. The first, which closed in February, focused on protecting people from illegal content. The current discussions will lead to new rules designed to stop children accessing harmful content. The Act divides harmful content into three broad categories:

Primary priority content (PPC) that is harmful to children:

Pornographic content, and content which encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders.

Priority content (PC) that is harmful to children:

Content which is abusive or incites hatred, bullying content, and content which encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for violence, dangerous stunts and challenges, and self-administering harmful substances.

Non-designated content that presents a material risk of harm to children:

Any types of content that do not fall within the above two categories which presents “a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of UK children.”
 
Based on these definitions, Ofcom has published draft Children’s Safety Codes which aim to ensure that:

  1. Children will not normally be able to access pornography.
  2. Children will be protected from seeing, and being recommended, potentially harmful content.
  3. Children will not be added to group chats without their consent.
  4. It will be easier for children to complain when they see harmful content, and they can be more confident that their complaints will be acted on.

 

Creating a safer online environment

In a four-week period (June-July 2023), Ofcom found that 62% of children aged 13-17 encountered PPC/PC online. Research also found that children consider violent content ‘unavoidable’ online, and that nearly two-thirds of children and young adults (13-19) have seen pornographic content. The number of girls aged 13-21 who have been subject to abusive or hateful comments online has almost tripled in 10 years from 20% in 2013 to 57% in 2023.

To create a safer online environment for children, Ofcom has outlined a series of steps that search services and user-to-user platforms will be expected to take.

Online services must determine whether or not they are likely to be accessed by children. To help in this, Ofcom has posted an online tool, here. Platforms that are likely to be accessed by children must:

  1. Complete a risk assessment to identify risks posed to children, drawing on Ofcom’s ‘children’s risk profiles’.
  2. Prevent children from encountering primary priority content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, and pornography. Services must also minimise children’s exposure to other serious harms defined as ‘priority content’, including violent, hateful or abusive material, bullying content, and content promoting dangerous challenges.
  3. Implement and review safety measures to mitigate the risks to children. Ofcom’s Safety Codes include more than 40 measures such as robust age checks, safer algorithms, effective moderation, strong governance and accountability, and more information and support for children including easy-to-use reporting and complaints processes.

 

Highly effective age assurance

There is no single fix-all measure that services can take to protect children online. But the package of measures recommended by Ofcom prominently relies on age assurance. Ofcom anticipates that most digital services not using age assurance are likely to be accessed by children. Once the final draft of the new rules comes into force, age assurance will be mandatory.
 
In practice, this will mean that all services will have to ban harmful content or introduce what Ofcom describes as “highly effective age-checks” restricting access to either the whole platform or parts of it that offer adults-only content. Ofcom defines “highly effective” as age assurance capable of technical accuracy, robustness, reliability, and fairness, with further details here.
 
Regulated services will no longer be able to get away with an ineffective ‘I am 18’ button. They will need to commit to age assurance technology to ensure their services are safer by design.
 
The quickest way of doing this is to adopt a proven digital ID product, like Luciditi. Ian Moody, Luciditi co-founder and CEO, says, “Easier and more cost-effective than starting from scratch, Luciditi can be easily embedded in web sites or apps, either by using a pre-built plugin or by using our Software Development Kit.”
 
Ofcom have specifically said their measures will apply to all sites that fall within the scope of the Act, irrespective of the size of the business. ‘We’re too small to be relevant’, won’t wash as an excuse.
 
Services cannot refuse to take steps to protect children simply because the work is too expensive or inconvenient. Ofcom says, “protecting children is a priority and all services, even the smallest, will have to take action as a result of our proposals.”
 

“Don’t wait for enforcement and hefty fines” – Tech Sec

According to Ofcom, children who have encountered harmful content experience feelings of anxiety, shame or guilt, sometimes leading to a wide-ranging and severe impact on their physical and mental wellbeing.
 
The lawlessness exploited by some of the world’s leading social media platforms has contributed to the deaths of children like 14-year-old Molly Russell. The coroner’s report concluded that watching content promoting suicide and self-harm had contributed to Molly’s death by suicide.
 
“We want children to enjoy life online”, said Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom Chief Executive, “but for too long, their experiences have been blighted by seriously harmful content which they can’t avoid or control. Many parents share feelings of frustration and worry about how to keep their children safe. That must change.”
 
The consultation exercise closes on July 17, 2024. Ofcom says, “We will take all feedback into account, as well as engaging with children to hear what they think of our plans. We expect to finalise our proposals and publish our final statement and documents in spring 2025.”
 
Welcoming Ofcom’s proposals, Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said, “To platforms, my message is engage with us and prepare. Do not wait for enforcement and hefty fines – step up to meet your responsibilities and act now.”
 
The Online Safety Act doesn’t pull its punches. Repeat offenders will potentially be fined up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue, whichever is greater, and company managers risk going to jail for up to two years. In the coming months, platforms will need to be proactive in committing to the age assurance products that will help them stay on the right side of the law.
 
In Britain at least, the carefree distribution of harmful content is about to change. Ofcom’s proposals go much further than current industry practice and demand a step-change from tech firms in how UK children are protected online.
 

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Luciditi’s Age Assurance technology can help companies meet these strict new guidelines.  If you would like to know more, Contact us for a chat today.

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Understanding the Online Safety Act: Implications for Adult Sites

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Ofcom calls for biometric age checks to stop children seeing adult content

Tough new guidance from Ofcom aims to protect children from seeing online pornography. The Online Safety Act, passed last autumn, restricts underage access to adult content. New details have been published explaining how this can be done through age assurance, giving digital identity platforms like Luciditi a frontline role in helping content providers stay on the right side of the law.

On average, children first see online pornography at age 13 – although nearly a quarter discover it by age 11 (27%), and one in 10 as young as nine (10%), according to research. Before turning 18, nearly eight in 10 youngsters (79%) have encountered violent pornography showing coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sex acts.

The Online Safety Act (OSA) aims to protect children by making the internet in the UK the safest place online in the world. Under the OSA, sites and apps showing adult content will have to ensure that children can’t access their platform.

Highly effective age checks

The new law has been described as a skeleton act. The bare bones approved by parliament will be fleshed out one topic at a time by the communications watchdog Ofcom.

Ofcom’s first update, last November, focused on protecting people from online harms. Now, its second period of consultation and guidance aims to protect children from online pornography through what it describes as “highly effective age checks.” The new guidance looks in detail at the age assurance tech that providers will need to adopt.

The porn industry has long been an early adopter of innovation – from online credit card transactions to live streaming. Age assurance, tried and trusted in other sectors, is unlikely to pose any technical challenges whether providers develop it in-house or adopt an existing product.

Businesses flouting the OSA can be fined up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue, and their directors jailed for up to two years. Nevertheless, the vast majority of adult content providers will be committed to maintaining a profitable, stable, and compliant operation that avoids tangling with the law. They don’t want kids looking at inappropriate material any less than anyone else.

The difficulties of staying in-house

To comply with the OSA, providers must introduce age assurance – through age estimation, age verification or a combination of both.

In most cases, adults will be able to access a site through age estimation tech. Smart AI assesses a selfie in estimating whether a user is at least five years older than 18. Users who are 18 or thereabouts will be asked to verify their age through personal identity data confirming their date of birth.

The big question for both providers and users is who should oversee the selfies and data, providers or third-party specialists?

If developed in-house, estimation and verification can bring challenges perhaps unique to the porn industry. Criminals target users by surreptitiously activating the camera on their device and threatening to release the footage if money isn’t handed over. Just the threat of this can lead to a payout, even without evidence that the camera was actually activated.

Mindful of a risk of blackmail or other breaches of anonymity, users may be reluctant to send a selfie to a porn site. Asking them to give up their personal data poses an even bigger challenge. Explicit website Pornhub said regulations requiring the collection of “highly sensitive personal information” could jeopardise user safety.

Social media users are already sceptical – memes have started appearing showing someone accessing a porn site and being asked for a selfie before they enter. In the US, similar worries about age checks led users to access porn sites via a virtual private network (VPN). In Utah, demand for VPNs surged by 847% the day after new age checks came into effect.

Staying in-house means having to overcome widespread concerns. Providers who are legitimate, established, and successful but owned by an international parent group may particularly struggle to persuade British users that their selfie and data will be permanently and properly safeguarded.

Expertise from Luciditi

There is an easy, trusted alternative to the in-house route. Digital ID platforms such as Luciditi create an ‘air-gapped’ solution. A specialist in age assurance, Luciditi is British, well-established, and trusted by the UK government as Britain’s first supplier of a digital PASS proof of age card. Its developers, who have a background in digitally managing sensitive NHS records, have brought Luciditi to a range of industries. Users are already sending selfies and data to Luciditi for other age-restricted products or services.

Ofcom suggests that age assurance could involve tech associated with facial age estimation, photo ID matching and open banking all of which Luciditi already perform. Luciditi securely processes all selfies and data and instantly destroys it after use. Nothing is given to a third-party beyond an automated nod that a user is an adult. This meets Ofcom’s requirement for providers to take care in safeguarding privacy.

Prevention of tracking also an important factor, not just by the site operator, but also by the data source. So if a user chooses Open Banking to prove their age, your bank can’t see “why” they needed it or “whom” they shared it with – often called a “double blind” verification. Having certified systems handling privacy, anonymity and security is essential if it is ever to be trusted by users.

“We’re perfectly placed to support the adult content industry with age assurance”, said Ian Moody, Luciditi CEO, “our in-depth experience in supporting online providers of other age-restricted products means we can quickly bring sites up to the new standards set by Ofcom.”

Embedded in a provider’s site, Luciditi’s tech would operate behind the scenes, independently overseeing access. Providers could welcome new users with a message saying that access is managed by a reputable, independent third-party, safeguarding anonymity. This would assure users that they are not sending anything directly to the owners of a porn site. Additionally, providers can embed Luciditi across all their age-restricted products and services, whether relating to adult content or not.

User-generated content

As an established digital identity platform, Luciditi supports individuals as well as businesses. Users download the Luciditi app, which is free and easy to use. This lets them create their own digital identity wallet, safely storing their selfie and data and letting them breeze through an age check in a couple of taps.

This facility will benefit providers who host adult user-generated content and who need to know that performers are aged 18 or over. This issue isn’t covered by the latest guidance but will be included in Ofcom’s next update, due in spring 2024. Providers who choose to act early can future-proof their business now by addressing this issue as part of their wider approach to age assurance.

No alternatives

During the current process of consultation, which ends on March 5th, Ofcom will not be looking at softer options. For providers looking to retain their audience, age assurance is the only show in town. “Our practical guidance sets out a range of methods for highly effective age checks”, said Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s Chief Executive, “we’re clear that weaker methods – such as allowing users to self-declare their age – won’t meet this standard.”

The OSA effectively fired a starting gun. The race is now on for adult content providers to accept its provisions, take appropriate action, and adopt the tech they need before the law is enforced in or after 2025.

It’s not just about completing the work before the new measures are actively enforced. It’s about acting quickly to maintain a competitive position. Businesses that build trust early will seize the advantage in developing their market share. It’s not just the new law that providers need to be mindful of, it’s each other.

Want to know more?

Luciditi’s Age Assurance technology can help meet some of the challenges presented by the OSA. If you would like to know more, Contact us for a chat today.

Get in touch