TikTok faces Ofcom investigation over child age checks Source: BBC News

 

 

TikTok has become an investigative target for the UK's Telecoms Regulator OFCOM.

Ofcom will examine how the video-sharing app assesses if a user is a child and whether it has adequate systems to prevent children from viewing harmful content. The focus of many concerns has become the means by which platforms confirm the age of those that gain access.

Ofcom's review of TikTok's age checks are part of a broader clampdown on sites failing to prevent children encountering adult content, such as pornography, and other harmful material.

OFCOM's Kate Davies, Ofcom's group director for strategy and research,  stated "This is where TikTok comes in. We found that some method of age checks being used by social media are not working well enough".

Read the full story here.

 

 

New evidence on online harms affecting children Source: Source: Youth Justice Board

 

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has today published a comprehensive new 'Evidence and Insights Pack' on Online Harms Affecting Children. 

The Evidence and Insights Pack brings together the latest research, data, and practice examples from across England and Wales to improve our understanding of the risks children face online and how we safeguard them in an increasingly complex digital landscape.

The evidence pack highlights that while online platforms are central to children’s lives, they expose them to severe, overlapping risks:

• Children face a wide range of digital harms, including cyberbullying, sexual abuse, radicalisation, and exploitation.
• Exposure to harmful content and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images have become increasingly normalised among children, disproportionately affecting girls.
• Many children who engage in problematic online behaviours have complex needs or are themselves victims of abuse.
• Inadequate platform design features and a lack of digital literacy among adults significantly increases risk and hinder effective safeguarding.
• Online harms have long-lasting impacts on wellbeing and, for some children, are directly linked to involvement in offline violence.

 Access to Evidence and Insights pack here.

 

New guidance for parents and carers as AI-manipulated images of children become a growing concern Source: National Crime Agency

 

UK's National Crime Agency issued guidance for parents and carers to alert them to the growing threat of children's images shared online being manipulated into AI generated sexual abuse material. 

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the National Crime Agency (NCA) have seen an increase in online offenders exploiting openly available images of children to create realistic sexualised content.

IWF analysts found 3,440 AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse in 2025, compared to just 13 in 2024, and the NCA have increasingly seen offenders exploiting AI technologies to target children in new ways.

 The use of AI to manipulate images posted online and turn these against the targets is not something that is easy to block or taken down, particularly when direct communications are used to make contact.

Chief Executive of the Internet watch Foundation stated that "The threat is disturbing. If someone's imagery is online, they could be easy pickings for criminals and anyone, especially children, could find themselves being targeted."

Read the guidance here. 

Porn site company fined £630,000 over failed age checks Source: BBC News

 

The UK regulator continues its challenges to Porn sites that remain open without any age verification in place. The rules regarding such material are governed by UK legislation design to prevent children and young people from accessing such content by requiring the service providers to implement effective age verification mechanisms.

 

 Failure to do this results in fines and other actions against the provider and to date a large number of such providers have obeyed the law and put controls in place. 

 

This latest story from July 2026 shows that such fines can be massive and grow should companies refuse to obey the UK legislation. If companies refuse to comply OFCOM have a range of actions they can take:

• Substantial Fines: Ofcom has the authority to fine non-compliant companies up to £18 million or 10% of their global annual turnover, whichever is higher. For example, the regulator has previously fined adult providers up to £1.35 million for failing to enforce proper age verification.  
• Daily Financial Penalties: Sites that fail to comply after being penalized or those that ignore legally binding information requests face ongoing daily financial penalties. 
• Site Blocking: In extreme cases of persistent non-cooperation or refusal to implement checks, Ofcom holds the power to block access to the website entirely within the UK.

The rules seem to be working with fines amounting to over £2.5million issued since the beginning of 2026.

 

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Outcry as Meta lets users make AI images from public Instagram profile pics Source: BBC News

 

 

BBC News report describes complaints aimed at Meta over its new AI tool Muse Image. There are a number of tools that can create images from simple sentences but Muse can generate pictures using other people's profile pictures without telling them.

While Meta says users can opt out of their image being used even with a public account, Donald Campbell, advocacy director at tech justice non-profit Foxglove told the BBC it was an "obvious recipe for disaster".

"We've already seen a catalogue of harms from non-consensual AI-altered images on social platforms just in the past year," he added.

Read the full story here.