Lewis Silkin are most popular:


within Cannabis & Hemp, Law Practice Management and Criminal Law topic(s)
in United Kingdom
with readers working within the Retail & Leisure industries

December has been another busy month for online safety
developments, with both Ofcom and the ICO being active.

Ofcom fines file-sharing service £20,000 under section
132 of Online Safety Act 2023

Ofcom has imposed a penalty of £20,000 on the
provider of the Im.ge service regarding its failure to comply with
two statutory information requests. Ofcom said that the fine has
been set with its Penalty Guidelines in mind. In addition it is
requiring the Im.ge Service to take immediate steps to comply with
section 102(8) of the Online Safety Act by providing the
information requested in two statutory information requests, which
included a copy of the record of the Illegal Content Risk
Assessment for the service; and information about its qualifying
worldwide revenue. If it still doesn’t comply, Ofcom will
impose a daily rate penalty of £100 per day. Ofcom is
continuing to investigate the Im.ge Service’s compliance with
its duties to complete, and keep a record of, a suitable and
sufficient illegal content risk assessment and its compliance with
the illegal content duties in respect of child sexual abuse
material remain ongoing. It will provide updates on these matters
in due course.

AVS changes its age assurance processes

Ofcom also confirmed that AVS Group Ltd, which it
recently fined £1 million for not having robust
age checks in place on 18 adult websites, has now introduced a new
age assurance process on all sites that were the subject of
Ofcom’s investigation.

Guidance on how tech firms should treat bereaved parents

In accordance with its Roadmap, Ofcom is seeking views on proposed
industry guidance relating to how tech firms respond to
requests from bereaved parents about their child’s use of a
service in the event of their death. Ofcom has spoken to bereaved
parents about the significant barriers they’ve faced when
seeking answers from tech firms about their children’s use of
their sites and apps before their death. The Online Safety Act
places requirements on tech firms about how they can increase
transparency and reduce uncertainty for bereaved parents making
requests in difficult circumstances. To help services to comply
with these duties, the Act also requires Ofcom to produce industry
guidance. The draft guidance expects services, among other things,
to provide clear and accessible information in their terms of
service about their information disclosure policy, including how
bereaved parents can make requests and the evidence required; make
sure that they respond to bereaved parents in a timely manner;
offer a support function, which might be a helpline, to bereaved
parents; and operate a simple to use, easy to access and
transparent complaints function, with a nominated team or
individual responsible for handling concerns, and a clear response
timeframe. The consultation ends on 23 March 2026.

Preserving information about a deceased child’s online
activity

Separately, Ofcom has issued its final Guidance for online platforms that sets out
what information they are required to retain about a child’s
online activity when Ofcom issues a Data Preservation Notice. Ofcom
issues Data Preservation Notices at the request of a coroner
investigating the death of a child. They require the recipient to
retain information relating to a child’s online activity from
the point they receive the notice, making sure that the information
is available to the coroner if requested. It has already issued a
number of these notices since the provisions came into force on 30
September. Some online platforms automatically delete a user’s
data if their account is inactive for a certain period. To enable
swift action after a child’s death, Ofcom has set out the types
of information coroners may wish to provide to Ofcom about the
child if known at the time, and the types of information it will
generally require platforms to preserve. It has also updated its
guidance about its information gathering powers to reflect
this.

ICO to monitor how mobile games protect children’s online
privacy

Earlier this month, the ICO announced that it would be scrutinising how
popular mobile games played by children in the UK protect their
online privacy. It highlighted that around 90% of UK children play
games on digital devices, so it is launching a monitoring programme
targeting ten popular mobile games. The review will assess the
games’ compliance with default privacy settings, their
geolocation controls, and their targeted advertising practices. It
will also consider any other privacy issues identified during the
review process. The ICO says that the new focus on mobile games
follows significant progress in improving children’s privacy
standards across social media and video-sharing platforms through
its Children’s code strategy. We will be writing more about
this topic in the new year.

UK government announces ban on nudification apps

As part of its strategy to reduce violence against women and
girls, the UK government has highlighted the rise of nudification apps. It has said that it will
ban nudification apps and other tools designed to create synthetic
non-consensual intimate images to stop women and girls’ images
being tampered with and exploited without their consent. This aims
to target the firms and individuals providing and supplying such
tools. We are waiting for more detail on when and how this will be
done.

Ofcom has received some criticism for its slow implementation of
the Act, but it is getting into its stride now with more fines,
facilitating platforms to change their practices, and issuing new
guidance. Platforms and service providers should note that the ICO
is monitoring them as well. 

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.