The UK media and telecoms regulator has fined a pornography website firm £1 million for not having robust enough age verification checks in place as required under the Online Safety Act.

AVA Group Ltd, which runs 18 websites with adult content, has been issued the £1m fine, as well as £50,000 for failing to respond to information requests from the regulator Ofcom.

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

Within days of this duty coming into force in July, Ofcom launched investigations into the providers of dozens of adult sites, including AVS Group Ltd. With millions of monthly UK visitors, these websites were prioritised based on their user numbers and the risk of harm they posed.

While AVS said it implemented age verification checks, Ofcom has not designated it to be highly effective, and have fined the company £1m.

AVS will also be required to implement highly effective age assurance checks within 72 hours of Ofcom’s decision, which was made on 4 December, or face a daily penalty of £1,000 a day.

For not responding to Ofcom’s legally binding information request, AVS is being fined £300 per day until it responds, on top of the initial £50,000 penalty.

The ruling comes along with new research from Ofcom which delves into the evolving world of online safety.

The research found that six in ten (58%) parents think the measures in the updated codes are already improving children’s online safety in the UK, with 67% feeling the measures will make aa difference in the future. More than a third (36%) have already noticed a potential impact on their child’s online activity.

“Since the enforcement of the Online Safety Act, platforms have finally started taking responsibility for protecting children and removing illegal and hateful content,” technology secretary Liz Kendall said.

“Ofcom has the government’s full backing to use all its powers to ensure that services put users’ safety first. Keeping children safe online is this government’s and my personal priority.”

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Ofcom has noted its progress with age checks, as it’s new research found that nearly half (47%) of children ages 8 to 17 have run into age checks when trying to access age-restricted material online, compared to 30% before the July age check deadline.

However, the age check verification method of keeping children away from age restricted content has come under fire from online privacy advocates as well as for being relatively easy to outmanoeuvre.

Upon the July deadline, VPN downloads in the UK shot up across major VPN providers, which would allow users to bypass UK online safety checks by allowing users to appear to access websites in a different country.

Further, privacy and cybersecurity advocates have said that the age checks, which often require person information such as IDs, biometrics, or credit card information, is a privacy infringement for adults as well as a data protection risk, which was exemplified by a recent breach of ID images from online platform Discord.