Ofcom has issued a £1.05 million fine to OnlyFans for failing to provide accurate information to formal requests on its age assurance measures on the platform.

The website is known to host sexually explicit content, and says that visitors must be at least 18 years of age. To verify this, the company uses facial age estimation technology from a third party to analyse a selfie from a prospective user to determine their age.

OnlyFans initially reported to Ofcom that the age estimation tech was set to flag anyone who appeared under the age of 23, who would be asked to provide a form of ID to prove their age.

OnlyFans’ parent company Fenix International, alerted Ofcom in January 2024 that it had provided incorrect information about the ‘challenge age’ set for its age estimation technology, prompting Ofcom to launch an investigation.

The company was instead flagging people who looked to be under the age of 20.

The regulator looked into if Fenix had failed to accurately respond to formal requests for information, eventually revealing a number of concerns.

Ofcom expects that robust checks are in place to ensure information is properly interrogated, crosschecked, and reviewed through appropriate channels, prior to it being submitted in response to a formal information request.

The company took over 16 months to discover that it had provided Ofcom with inaccurate information, and Ofcom has said that a more robust fact checking process would have resulted in the incorrect submission coming to light sooner.

As a result of these failings, Ofcom has imposed a financial penalty on Fenix of £1.05 million, which will be passed on to HM Treasury. This includes a 30% reduction from the penalty the regulator would otherwise have imposed, as a result of resource savings achieved through Fenix accepting the findings and settling the case.

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“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,” Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s enforcement director said.

“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.”

Three main issues were highlighted by Ofcom when deciding how big of a fine to issue.

Fenix is a large, well-resourced company which Ofcom argues is well aware of its regulatory obligations.

The data inaccuracy undermined Ofcom’s ability to carry out its regulatory function, given it led to inaccurate data being published by Ofcom.

Further, after Fenix identified the error, it took over two weeks for the company to report the issue to Ofcom.