{"id":35623,"date":"2025-07-31T11:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T11:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/35623\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T11:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T11:09:07","slug":"ofcom-investigates-34-porn-sites-over-uk-age-verification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/35623\/","title":{"rendered":"Ofcom investigates 34 porn sites over UK age verification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since age verification requirements took effect on Friday, people in the UK have been asked to confirm their age across a range of different platforms including social media platforms Reddit and X.<\/p>\n

Spotify confirmed to the BBC on Wednesday that it may prompt people in the UK, among other locations including Australia, to confirm their age if accessing music videos rated 18+ by uploaders.<\/p>\n

The sweeping rules have prompted a backlash from some who see the requirements as an overreach or potential privacy concern.<\/p>\n

More than 400,000 people have now signed a petition calling for the repeal of the Online Safety Act – the law requiring age checks to stop children encountering adult content.<\/p>\n

The government said in response it has no plans to withdraw the law.<\/p>\n

Some have also criticised the effectiveness of Ofcom’s implementation of UK age check requirements, and their potential circumvention using virtual private networks. <\/p>\n

Apps providing free VPNs – which allow people to disguise their location online, in order to access the web from a different location – topped free app download charts on Apple’s App Store<\/a> after the rules came into effect on Friday.<\/p>\n

Ofcom has defended the measures as no “silver bullet” but said they will help make the internet safer for children by reducing the chance of them “stumbling across porn”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since age verification requirements took effect on Friday, people in the UK have been asked to confirm their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-35623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}