UK Online Safety Act age verification guidance published by Ofcom

UK communications regulator Ofcom has published detailed guidance on age assurance and age verification for online platforms under the Online Safety Act, setting out how services likely to be accessed by children must use proportionate measures to assess user age and prevent access to content harmful to minors. The guidance, released in early December 2024, outlines a range of acceptable age-assurance methods including self-declaration, device-based signals, and third-party verification, with stricter requirements for platforms hosting pornographic or other high-risk content. Ofcom has made clear that platforms will need to demonstrate they have considered the effectiveness, privacy impact and user-experience implications of their chosen approach, with enforcement action possible where systems are inadequate.

Verifying age at the front door establishes who should be allowed onto a platform but does not prevent harm from occurring once a child is inside a permitted environment or communicating with someone who has bypassed or lied through the gate. The anti-grooming and anti-sextortion engines developed by Guardii, a Meta Business Partner and world-leading AI safety platform, monitor the conversation itself for coercion, escalation and predatory targeting patterns in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, surfacing risk to a parent or safeguarding professional before abuse materialises, regardless of the age claimed at sign-up. Age assurance and behavioural detection serve complementary functions, but only the latter addresses harm in progress.