Tech companies will be ordered to take down intimate images shared without a victim’s consent within 48 hours, under new UK laws to protect women and girls from this distressing abuse.

Through an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, companies will be legally required to remove this content no more than 48 hours after it is flagged to them, and platforms that fail to act could face fines of up to 10% of their qualifying worldwide revenue or having their services blocked in the UK.

The Government says it is determined to make sure that victims will only need to report an image once. This would mean where an image is reported, they are removed across multiple platforms in one go, and from then on, they are automatically deleted at every new upload.

As part of that work, plans are currently being considered by Ofcom for these kinds of images to be treated with the same severity as child sexual abuse and terrorism content, digitally marking them so that any time someone tries to repost them, they will be automatically taken down.

In a further step to protect victims, the Government will publish guidance for internet providers setting out how they should block access to sites hosting this content, targeting rogue websites that may fall outside the reach of the Online Safety Act.

In recent years, there has been a worrying trend of intimate images being used to threaten, intimidate and distress, and the Prime Minister is determined to hand back control to victims and end their fear that even when an image is taken down, it will only be put up somewhere else.