The UK communications regulator has confirmed that major pornographic websites, including Pornhub, will introduce age verification checks next month, in order to comply with the Online Safety Act.

Ofcom announced on Thursday that “the UK’s major porn providers agree to age checks from next month.” The websites will implement age verification checks by Friday 25 July.

This move has been in the works for a while now, after Ofcom had warned in January 2025 that “robust” age verification checks on all websites containing online pornography would need to be in place by July 2025 at the latest.

Online Safety Act

In December 2023 Ofcom had published its proposals for acceptable age-verification methods for porn websites, so as to comply with the Online Safety Act that had received Royal Assent in October 2023.

The passing of the controversial Online Safety Bill had been a blow to privacy campaigners and big name tech firms, which had consistently opposed the British legislation.

Tech firms had been alarmed at the provisions in the bill for creating an encryption backdoor.

Companies could be fined up to 10 percent of their global turnover if they fail to adhere to the regulations, or Ofcom could potentially block the websites from being accessible in the UK.

Executives of offending websites could also be jailed.

Robust age checks

But another controversial aspect of the Online Safety Act was the requirement for age verification to access online pornographic websites.

Ofcom has previously cited research that children are being exposed to online pornography from an early age.

Of those who have seen online pornography, the average age they first encounter it is aged 13 – although more than a quarter come across it by age 11 (27 percent), and one in ten as young as 9 (10 percent).

Ofcom had proposed that acceptable age checking or verification include banking verification to ensure the user is over 18; photo ID checking; facial age estimation; mobile network operator age checking; credit card checks; and digital identity wallet checks.

Pornhub agreement

And now Ofcom has confirmed that PornHub is among porn services to publicly commit to the age verification checks.

“By 25 July, all sites and apps that allow pornography – whether they are dedicated adult sites or social media, search or gaming services – must use highly effective age checks to ensure children are not normally able to encounter it,” said Ofcom.

“Major porn providers operating in the UK have confirmed to Ofcom that they will introduce effective checks by next month’s deadline in order to comply with the new rules,” the regulator stated. “They include PornHub, the most-visited pornographic service in the UK.”

“Other services who are happy to be named at this stage include BoyfriendTV, Cam4, FrolicMe, inxxx, Jerkmate, LiveHDCams, MyDirtyHobby, RedTube, Streamate, Stripchat, Tube8, and YouPorn,” Ofcom said. “This represents a broad range of pornography services accessed in the UK.”

“Society has long protected youngsters from products that aren’t suitable for them, from alcohol to smoking or gambling,” said Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom Group Director of Online Safety. “But for too long children have been only a click away from harmful pornography online.”

“Now, change is happening,” Griffiths said. “These age checks will bring pornography into line with how we treat adult services in the real world, without compromising access and privacy for over-18s.”

2015 promise

It should be remembered that it was the government of David Cameron , which as far back as 2015 had promised age verification checks in the UK in an effort to stop children from accessing online porn.

That was despite the fact that there was already opt-out ISP porn filters introduced by the government in 2013, which was intended to help households control access to adult material, but unintentionally blocked educational resources such as sexual health websites.

The government tried again to implement porn age checking, and it was supposed to have been implemented in April 2018.

But again the government delayed it, despite porn website owners preparing for the legal checks.

In 2018 for example the owner of porn websites including PornHub had revealed its online age verification tool call AgeID, that it would use to verify the age of people seeking online smut.

Earlier this month the Canadian owner of Pornhub, Aylo, announced that Pornhub, Youporn and RedTube websites would stop operating in France, due to a French law requiring adult sites to take extra steps to verify that their users are 18 or older.