Recommendation 17

HM Government Not Addressed

The Online Safety Bill is intended to protect children wherever they are online. This includes services which are not targeted at children but which they are accessing. All services in scope will need to prove children are not accessing their service, or they will need to conduct a child safety risk assessment and provide safety measures for child users, keeping these under regular review. Under our proposals, we are actively encouraging companies to take steps to ensure that only users who are old enough are able to access services which have age restrictions or risk causing them harm. Companies should use age verification technologies to prevent children from accessing services which pose the highest risk of harm to children. Companies will also need to provide age-appropriate protections for children using their service. This includes protecting children from harmful content and activity on their service and reviewing children’s use of higher risk features, such as live streaming or private messaging. To support this requirement, companies should implement age assurance solutions so they have confidence about which of their users are children and can provide them with higher levels of protection. Ofcom will take a robust approach to sites that pose the highest risk of harm to children and will expect companies to put in place the strongest safety measures, including where appropriate preventing children from accessing their service. As part of this, Ofcom may recommend the use of age verification technologies to support age-gating for high-risk services. Companies would need to put in place these technologies or demonstrate that the approach they are taking delivers the same level of protection for children, or face enforcement action by the regulator. The government is working closely with stakeholders across industry to establish the right conditions to grow the age assurance market and other technical solutions ahead of the legislative requirements coming into force. The DCMS Secretary of State wrote to technology platforms on 21 May with concerns over their current efforts to prevent under age children accessing their sites. The letter calls for greater collaboration and transparency from companies over their current and future age assurance plans. It also asks that they commit their significant resources to developing innovative age assurance solutions that effectively identify child users on their platforms.