Ofcom has issued an update on its enforcement under the Online Safety Act (OSA).
In March 2025, duties came into force under the OSA that mean online services providers must assess the risk of people in the UK encountering illegal content and activity and when they become aware of it, remove it and take steps to reduce the risk of UK users seeing it. In July, requirements to protect children came into force.
Ofcom has launched five enforcement programmes and opened 21 investigations into providers of 69 sites and apps. It has now issued an update on several investigations.
File-sharing services are now using automated tech to tackle child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Through Ofcom’s enforcement programme to assess safety measures taken by file-sharing services, it identified serious compliance concerns with two services – 1Fichier.com and Gofile.io. Both providers committed to strengthening their protections. They have now deployed perceptual hash-matching technology designed to detect and remove CSAM quickly. Therefore, Ofcom is not taking any further action against either service.
Ofcom is also taking action against providers that ignore legally-binding information requests. The provider of 4chan has not responded to Ofcom’s request for a copy of its illegal harms risk assessment or a request relating to its qualifying worldwide revenue. Ofcom has consequently fined 4chan £20,000 and will impose a daily penalty of £100 per day for 60 days or until 4chan provides it with the requested information. Ofcom continues to investigate 4chan’s compliance with duties to protect UK users from illegal harms.
Ofcom has also issued two provisional decisions against file-sharing service Im.ge and pornography service provider AVS Group Ltd for similar failures to respond to information requests in addition to another provisional decision that AVS has failed to comply with its duty to put effective age checks in place.
Providers of some services have also taken steps to prevent people in the UK from accessing their sites, such as by ‘geoblocking’ access from UK IP addresses instead of implementing safety measures under Ofcom’s Codes. Four file-sharing services investigated under Ofcom’s CSAM enforcement programme – Krakenfiles, Nippydrive, Nippyshare and Nippyspace, have taken this approach. Ofcom will not be taking any further action, but it will keep the situation under review to ensure that websites are not encouraging UK users to circumvent geoblocking, for example by using VPNs.
