UK Online Safety Act comes into force today

As deadline passes to carry out illegal harms risk assessments, sites and apps must now start tackling criminal content Ofcom launches enforcement programme into child sexual abuse imagery on file-sharing services From today, online platforms must start putting in place measures to protect people in the UK from criminal activity, while Ofcom has launched its latest enforcement programme to assess industry compliance. Providers of services in scope of the UK’s Online Safety Act had until yesterday (16 March) to carry out a suitable and sufficient illegal harms risk assessment – to understand how likely it is that users could encounter illegal content on their service, or, in the case of ‘user-to-user’ services, how they could be used to commit or facilitate certain criminal offences.[1] From today, the next set of illegal harms duties come into force. That means platforms now have to start implementing appropriate measures to remove illegal material quickly when they become aware of ... Read full article.