The Fapello age check fine handed down by Ofcom on 8 July 2026 totals £630,000, making it the latest escalation in the regulator’s campaign to force pornography sites to comply with the Online Safety Act 2023.
The penalty breaks into two parts. Ofcom fined the operator £600,000 for failing to deploy any age verification system under section 12 of the Online Safety Act, which requires services to prevent children from encountering pornographic content through the use of highly effective age assurance. A further £30,000 was added after the operator failed to respond to a formal information notice issued on 12 December 2025, breaching its duty under section 102(8) of the same Act.
‘Age checks are no longer optional for porn sites in the UK,’ said George Lusty, director of enforcement at Ofcom. ‘They are a cornerstone of our laws to protect children from content they should not be seeing.’
Lusty added: ‘Providers also need to know that if they don’t supply accurate information to us on time, when we request it, they should expect to face enforcement action, including fines.’
The age assurance duty has applied to UK-accessible pornography sites since 25 July 2025. Fapello’s operator introduced no checks at all and did not reply to Ofcom’s information requests on time. The site has since blocked UK visitors, but Ofcom says it will continue to monitor compliance.
A Pattern of Fines, and Persistent Questions About Deterrence
The Fapello age check fine sits within a broader enforcement programme that has been accelerating. In May, BBC News reported that Ofcom fined YoungTek Solutions Ltd £600,000: £500,000 for failing to put age checks in place and £100,000 for not responding to information requests. Before that, the regulator levied a £1.35 million penalty on a separate adult site operator for the same core failure.
The pattern reveals something about Ofcom’s current approach. The information-request penalties (£30,000 on Fapello, £100,000 on YoungTek) are being added on top of the primary age-assurance penalties, signalling that silence or delay is being treated as a separate offence, not simply absorbed into the headline fine.
Whether the fines are deterring non-compliance is a harder question. It emerged in December 2025 that Ofcom had never heard from the firm behind a £1 million fine, prompting questions about whether monetary penalties alone could compel action. That same company later came into compliance. Separately, online message board 4chan is contesting a £520,000 fine and a lawyer for the firm has responded to further enforcement threats with AI-generated cartoon images of hamsters.
Ofcom does have a harder tool available. Under the Online Safety Act, it can apply to a court for a blocking order against a non-compliant site in the most serious cases, not merely issue financial penalties. That option has not been used publicly against any pornography provider yet, but its existence will be relevant as the regulator’s patience with recalcitrant operators runs out.
Bit Hive and Eporner.com Now Under Investigation
On the same day it issued the Fapello decision, Ofcom announced it had opened a new investigation into Bit Hive, operator of the adult site Eporner.com. The investigation examines whether there are reasonable grounds to believe Bit Hive has failed, or is failing, to comply with section 12 duties under the Online Safety Act. Ofcom cited concern that one of Bit Hive’s age check methods ‘may not be highly effective.’
That phrase carries weight. Ofcom has set out accepted verification methods (credit card checks, photo ID matching, selfie-based age estimation) but all must be technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair. Having some form of check in place is not enough if the implementation does not meet that standard.
The Ofcom enforcement programme has so far targeted operators who deployed nothing at all. The Bit Hive investigation suggests the regulator is now willing to look harder at operators who have systems in place but whose methods may fall short of the statutory threshold. That is a meaningful shift in scope.
The Fapello investigation record will also serve as a template: ignore the regulator’s information notices, and the fine gets larger. The next operator to test that proposition should expect the same arithmetic.
