Pornhub to limit UK customers from subsequent week amid crackdown to guard minors
Pornhub is set to restrict UK users’ access to the adult content website following the government’s Online Safety Act.
Aylo, the Cyprus-based company who own the pornography site, has said that from February 2 it will block new British users.
They also warned that the Law’s age verification software, designed to stop children from accessing Pornhub, has ‘diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet’ and ‘has not achieved its goal of protecting minors’.
‘We cannot continue to operate within a system that, in our view, fails to deliver on its promise of child safety, and has had the opposite impact,’ Aylo’s statement said.
‘Despite the clear intent of the law to restrict minors’ access to adult content… our experience strongly suggests that the OSA [Online Safety Act] has failed to achieve that objective.’
Since last July, the Online Safety Act has required websites to check users are aged over 18 before letting them access potentially ‘harmful’ material such as pornography or face being fined up to £18million.
In the most serious cases, UK regulator Ofcom can take legal action to block access to the site or platform concerned from the UK.
Critics have claimed the law could push children on to more dangerous and less regulated areas of the internet.
Pornhub has announced that from February 2 it will block new UK users (stock image)
Others have argued the age checks are easy to bypass with the use of a VPN – which can disguise a user’s location.
Following the introduction of the law, Britain saw a huge surge in VPN use which spiked by more than 700 per cent in the days after.
The government has since faced pressure to strengthen the bill. Last week, the House of Lords voted to pass an amendment to block children’s access to VPNs.
Despite the ease with which the law can be bypassed, many sites agreed to introduce the age checks.
Ofcom listed seven methods that porn providers could check ages.
The chosen method must be ‘highly effective’ at correctly determining if a user is under 18.
Ofcom’s seven suggested strategies are photo-ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile-network operator (MNO) age checks, credit card checks, email-based age estimation, digital identity services and open banking.
Open banking works by accessing the information a bank has on record regarding a user’s age, while photo-ID matching involves uploading a verified photo-ID document, like a PDF of a passport or driving licence.
Facial age estimation works by analysing the features of a user’s face from a photo to work out their age, while MNO age checks involve mobile-network operators applying age-restriction filters themselves.
Because you must be 18 to get a credit card in the UK, credit card checks are also listed as ‘highly effective’, as are email-based age estimations, which estimate your age based on other services where you’ve provided your email address.
