Ofcom has fined the provider of OnlyFans, Fenix International Limited, £1.05m for failing to accurately respond to formal requests for information about its age assurance measures on the platform.
Firms are required, by law, to respond to all statutory information requests from Ofcom in an accurate, complete and timely way.
In June 2022 and June 2023, Ofcom sought information from Fenix on the age assurance measures it had in place on its London-based platform.
This included asking how the platform was implementing age checks and, specifically, about the effectiveness of OnlyFans’ use of third-party facial estimation technology, provided by Yoti.
These requests were part of an information gathering exercise by Ofcom – using its powers under regulations that pre-date the Online Safety Act – to monitor how video-sharing platforms were keeping children safe online.
As part of its submission, Fenix stated that it had set a ‘challenge age’ via its use of the facial age estimation technology at 23 years.
The technology works by requiring a prospective user to upload a live selfie, which it then uses to estimate their age. If the tool estimates the prospective user’s age as being above the challenge age, they can continue to create an account on the OnlyFans platform.
Any user not estimated to be above the challenge age is required to verify that they are over 18 via a secondary method.
On 4th January 2024, Fenix said that it learned from its technology provider Yoti that the challenge age for OnlyFans was in fact set at 20 years old, not 23 years old.
Fenix later confirmed it had been set to 20 since 1st November 2021.
After learning this, it claims it elected to raise the challenge age to 23 on 16th January 2025 but then changed it again to 21 years old on 19 January 2025, and only first informed Ofcom about the error on 22nd January 2024.
Yoti said that OnlyFans had “inadvertently reported to Ofcom that they had set a threshold of 23 years when they had actually set it at 20 years”.
It added: “OnlyFans has always proactively elected to set the threshold for Yoti above 18 years old. The threshold is always set by the business, rather than by Yoti, as it is always the responsibility of each business to set an appropriate threshold either in compliance with regulatory requirements or to meet their internal operating policies.”
Given this disclosure and following engagement with the company to clarify the impact of the potential breach, Ofcom launched an investigation on 1st May 2024 to review whether Fenix had failed to comply with its duties to provide complete and accurate information to the regulator.
The investigation concluded that Fenix contravened its duties to provide accurate and complete information to Ofcom in response to two statutory information requests.
Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s enforcement director, said: “When we use our statutory powers to request information from platforms, they are required, by law, to ensure it is complete, accurate and delivered to us on time.
“Receiving accurate and complete information is fundamental for Ofcom to do its job as a regulator and to understand and monitor how platforms are operating. We will hold platforms to high standards and will not hesitate to take enforcement action where we find failings.”
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