Here’s how porn websites will prove users are over 18 from this summer
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The lube’s warmed up, the lights are low and you’ve got the house to yourself… Time for a bit of porn. But here comes the real boner killer – where’s your passport?. That’s the problem horny people will face when they log on to get off from this summer thanks to Ofcom.
![[View of desk with credit card in the wallet on computer laptop.]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_236185117-2aff.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
The communications watchdog has revealed how it plans to prevent children from watching porn online, including credit card checks, facial recognition and passport checks. The latest move comes off the back of the Online Safety Act 2023, passed while the Conservatives were in power, which required Ofcom to come up with suggestions.
Under the legislation, sites that provide pornographic content need to make sure children are ‘not normally able to encounter’ that content. That should be ‘by the use of age verification or age estimation (or both)’, according to the text of the law.
But such measures are notoriously tricky, with many tools easily bypassed by internet-savvy kids. Ofcom lists pop-ups asking users to input their date of birth without any further evidence and debit card checks among the measures that are next to useless at blocking under-18s.
According to the watchdog, the deadline for all services that allow pornography to introduce effective barriers is July this year. It might be understandable if people are reluctant to send over a picture of their face in order to access porn online. But two of the methods recommended by Ofcom require just that.
