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Ofcom and international online safety regulators have come together to highlight the importance of age checks in protecting children online. 

The Global Online Safety Regulators Network (GOSRN), which brings together online safety regulators across the world, has set out its views and expectations on the important role age assurance plays in the global effort to protect children.

At Ofcom, we recognise that online harms extend beyond national borders, and that tackling them requires a joined-up approach from a range of international organisations. Regulators convening to share knowledge, best practice and identify regulatory gaps is an important part of this.

In the UK, age checks are a cornerstone of the Online Safety Act, and Ofcom’s rules requiring sites and apps to have highly effective age assurance have been in force since July. We are currently monitoring services’ compliance and have opened investigations into 83 adult sites as part of our enforcement programme. We recently fined adult service provider AVS £1 million for failing to have highly effective age checks in place.  

Four areas of focus

Yesterday, GOSRN set out four key principles for how regulators should approach age assurance, which will help inform Ofcom’s and our international regulatory partners’ work in the coming years:

• Age assurance plays a foundational role in protecting children from harmful content and ensuring online services can deliver age-appropriate experience for child users. 
• Service providers should adhere to core outcome-focused principles when deploying age assurance, including accuracy, reliability, and fairness.
• Adhering to data protection laws and upholding users’ rights to privacy and expression is non-negotiable, wherever age assurance Is deployed. 
• Laws are only as good as their enforcement, and regulators must ensure age assurance requirements are enforced fairly, transparently, and proportionately.

International co-ordination can drive meaningful improvements in children’s online safety, and in its three-year strategic plan, GOSRN committed to improving regulatory coherence across its members’ online safety work. The publication also sets out how the Network will do this for age assurance.

Ofcom’s recent Online Safety in 2025 report outlined our focus on driving compliance with our current age check rules, and we are committed to continue to work with our international regulatory partners to protect children online.