Age verification for porn sites required by UK watchdog despite cybersecurity concerns

By July 2025, all services that allow pornography must have “highly effective age checks” to protect minors from accessing harmful content, Ofcom, the UK’s online safety regulator, says.

This requirement falls under the Online Safety Act, “a new set of laws that protect children and adults online,” the UK government said.

The Online Safety Act will help protect young children from accessing potentially harmful content like pornography.

Ofcom has said that by July of this year, all service providers who offer adult entertainment services will need to employ strict and “highly effective age checks” to ensure that the people using the sites are of age.

But, this could be a cause for concern when it comes to cybersecurity and the protection of personal data.

Ofcom offers some methods that are “capable of being highly effective.” These include:

• Open banking

• Photo identification matching

• Facial age estimation

• Mobile network operator age checks

• Credit card checks

• Digital identity services

• Email-based age estimation

While some of these methods may not be too invasive, checks like open banking and photo identification matching could cause issues as businesses will have access to your personal information.

Generally, age verification via photo ID checking is insecure as they will likely need to be digitally stored, which if not properly secured could be a playground for hackers.

Despite these concerns, Ofcom has instructed many sites and service providers that allow pornography to introduce effective age verification checks in early 2025.

This kind of thing is already happening in the US. Back in 2024, Pornhub opted for device-based verification to make sure that children aren’t using its services.

In 2024, many criticized certain age verification methods, saying that this violated their constitutional rights.

However, authorities deemed this a constitutional way to limit minors from accessing harmful content.

As of January 2025, Pornhub blocked its services in 17 states across the US due to age verification laws.