Ofcom has fined porn company 8579 LLC £1.35 million for not having age checks in place, plus £50,000 for failing to respond to an information request.

Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, sites that allow pornographic material must use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from readily accessing that content.

When these new rules came into force in July 2025, Ofcom immediately opened investigations into dozens of adult sites, including 8579 LLC.

Following its investigation, Ofcom has fined the adult site £1.35 million for failing to comply with these age check requirements. The company must immediately implement highly effective age assurance or face a daily penalty of £1,000.

The porn provider has also been fined a further £50,000 for failing to abide by requirements to comply with information requests made by Ofcom to aid in their investigations and assessments of age check compliance.

“We’ve been clear that adult sites must deploy robust age checks to protect children in the UK from seeing porn. Those that fail to do this – or ignore legally binding requests from us – should expect to face fines,” George Lusty, director of enforcement at Ofcom, said.

Ofcom has been on a tear recently as it continues to conclude investigations it began in July into porn sites’ compliance with age verification requirements.

Ava Group was fined £1M for its age check failures, while Kick Online Entertainment SA was fined £800,000 for infringements.

The crackdown has seen the rise of VPN usage in the UK, which allows users to circumvent regional age verification requirements to access certain websites.

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Debates surrounding the potential security fallouts of age verification – and its associated data gathering – have seen many cyber professionals question if these adult websites are able to ensure the data security necessary to safeguard the photo IDs and credit card information commonly used to verify user age.

Following the implementation of age verification requirements under the Online Safety Act, the world’s most popular porn site, PornHub, has announced that it will no longer allow new UK users that have yet to register their age with the company, in an odd pull out from the market as age check fines continue to be rolled out.