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Ofcom is seeking views on proposed industry Guidance relating to how tech firms respond to requests from bereaved parents about their child’s use of a service in the event of their death.

The loss of a child is a tragic experience for any parent and a source of enormous grief. Through our workshop and interviews with bereaved parents, we’ve heard first-hand about the significant barriers they’ve faced when seeking answers from tech firms about their children’s use of their sites and apps before their death.

The Online Safety Act places requirements on tech firms about how they can increase transparency and reduce uncertainty for bereaved parents making requests in these difficult circumstances. To help services to comply with these duties, the Act also requires Ofcom to produce industry Guidance.

Treating bereaved parents with dignity, respect and sensitivity

Ofcom’s draft industry Guidance, published for consultation yesterday, sets out the practical steps that we expect providers of relevant services to take in order to comply with the deceased child user duties, under the Act.

Given there is also scope for services to go further – above and beyond their core legal requirements – our proposed Guidance also includes a range of other good practice measures to ensure bereaved parents are treated with dignity, respect and sensitivity.

Our draft Guidance expects services, among other things, to:

• provide clear and accessible information in their terms of service about their information disclosure policy, including how bereaved parents can make requests and the evidence required;
• ensure they respond to bereaved parents in a timely manner;
• offer a support function – which might be a helpline – to bereaved parents; and
• operate a simple to use, easy to access and transparent complaints function, with a nominated team or individual responsible for handling concerns, and a clear response timeframe.

We are now seeking feedback on our draft Guidance which must be submitted by 23 March 2026.

We will take all responses into account before publishing our final Guidance, after which, we will review how providers of relevant services are complying with their duties in this area, and the extent to which they are applying the good practice measures.

Preserving information about a deceased child’s online activity

Separately, Ofcom yesterday finalised Guidance for online platforms that sets out what information they are required to retain about a child’s online activity when Ofcom issues a Data Preservation Notice.

Data Preservation Notices are issued by Ofcom at the request of a coroner investigating the death of a child. They require the recipient to retain information relating to a child’s online activity from the point they receive the notice, thus ensuring that the information is available to the coroner if requested.

We have already issued a number of these notices since the provisions came into force on 30 September.

Some online platforms automatically delete a user’s data if their account is inactive for a certain period. To enable swift action after a child’s death, we have set out the types of information coroners may wish to provide to Ofcom about the child if known at the time, and the types of data we will generally require platforms to preserve.

We are particularly grateful for the invaluable perspectives from bereaved parents in helping to shape our final Guidance.