Ofcom, the United Kingdom's communications regulator, published its final illegal content and child safety codes of practice on 19 August 2024, together with updated guidance for platforms on complying with the Online Safety Act 2023. The codes require Category 1 and Category 2A services to assess the risk of child sexual abuse and exploitation material on their platforms and to deploy proportionate systems and processes to prevent children from encountering such content, to remove it swiftly, and to report it to the National Crime Agency. Ofcom's child safety duties come into force in phases, with the largest platforms expected to complete risk assessments and implement measures by the first quarter of 2025.
Targeted real-time detection offers a complement to platform-level risk assessments by intervening at the point of contact. Guardii's anti-grooming, anti-sextortion and CSAM detection modules monitor direct-message exchanges across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, blocking or flagging hostile advances before they reach a child and surfacing acute risk to parents, schools or safeguarding teams. Where legislation mandates that platforms act on illegal content, behaviour-pattern recognition enables rapid escalation to the relevant authority without requiring retrospective trawls through stored communications, addressing both the regulatory duty and the operational need for speed.
