The European Commission has launched an investigation into four adult websites over their alleged failings in prohibiting children from seeing pornographic content.

The EU regulatory body is investigating Pornhub, Stripchat, XnXX and XVideos over alleged failures in their age verification and restriction measures.

The commission alleges that these sites’ age verification measures are ineffective and employ a simple ‘click away’ method that minors can easily bypass, without proper age verification.

The investigation will be open under the Digital Services Act, an EU law that has specific stipulations to protect children from harmful or inappropriate content, calling on large platforms to introduce age verification checks.

The Commission’s initial investigations found that the four platforms failed to establish “appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security for minors.”

The porn platforms are employing an ineffective method of turning minors away by simply asking if users are over 18 without introducing tools or methods to verify this information, the investigation found.

The platforms also failed to issue any risk assessments and ways to mitigate “any negative effects on the rights of the child, the mental and physical well-being of users,” the EU Commission said.

“Today is a good day for minor protection online in the EU, because with the enforcement actions that we are launching … against four very large online platforms with pornographic, adult content, we are clearly showing that we mean it when it comes to the effective protection of minors under the DSA,” an EU official said to reporters.

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The investigation has no fixed timetable for completion. The UK is also ramping up investigations into porn sites, with Ofcom investigating two different sites over allegations that they are not protecting children.

Pornhub, the largest porn platform in the world, and the 19th most visited site on the internet, according to Similarweb, is facing increasing scrutiny over its age verification and potential harm to consumers.

The site opted to block access in 16 US states after refusing to comply with laws requiring porn sites to verify user ages.