Ofcom has released final codes of practice under the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act, setting out how platforms must prevent users from encountering illegal content including child sexual exploitation and abuse material, with enforceable duties coming into effect for large user-to-user services from October 2026. The codes mandate proactive measures including content moderation systems, user reporting mechanisms and cooperation with law enforcement, and introduce significant financial penalties for non-compliance, with fines of up to ten percent of global annual revenue for the most serious breaches.
Real-time message screening meets the Act's proactive-prevention standard without imposing the privacy cost of retrospective platform audits or blanket data retention. As a Meta Business Partner, Guardii operates at the point of contact across Instagram and other high-risk messaging environments, intercepting grooming approaches, sextortion demands and CSAM distribution before they complete, and generating evidential logs that support both immediate safeguarding responses and referrals to the National Crime Agency or local authority, aligning enforcement with the duty of care the legislation now requires.
