Ofcom's regime turns child safety from a policy position into a documented obligation. These guides break the Act into the duties you actually have to evidence: risk assessments, the children's codes, age assurance, and what happens when a service gets it wrong.
Written by the Tuteliq team for engineering, trust and safety, and compliance functions. Not legal advice. Ofcom's published codes and guidance take precedence over anything here.
Illegal harms risk assessment
The four-step assessment every in-scope service had to complete before the illegal content duties took effect, and the evidence Ofcom expects you to keep.
Protection of Children Codes
Children's access assessments, children's risk assessments, and the safety measures Ofcom's children's codes set out for services likely to be accessed by children.
Enforcement and fines
How Ofcom actually enforces: information notices, investigations, penalties up to £18m or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, and business disruption measures.
Age assurance guide
What Ofcom's 'highly effective age assurance' standard requires in practice, which methods meet it, and which fall short.
Compliance overview
The full picture: duties by service type, harm categories mapped to detection coverage, and how Tuteliq fits into your evidence pack.
Common questions
Who does the UK Online Safety Act apply to?
The Act applies to user-to-user services and search services with links to the UK, regardless of where the company is based. That includes social platforms, messaging apps, gaming services, dating apps, marketplaces with user content, and forums. Ofcom's published guidance sets out the specific scope tests. There is no minimum user threshold for the illegal content duties, though the proportionality of the measures expected scales with size and risk.
What are the main duties under the Act?
Broadly: complete an illegal content risk assessment, put proportionate systems in place to prevent and remove illegal content, complete a children's access assessment and (if children are likely to access the service) a children's risk assessment, apply the children's safety duties, and keep records. Categorised services carry additional transparency and user empowerment duties.
Does using Tuteliq make my service compliant?
No vendor can make that claim for you. Compliance is assessed against your own risk assessment and the systems you operate. Tuteliq supplies detection, age assurance and audit evidence that supports specific duties. The assessments, records and decisions remain your organisation's responsibility.
Where is the authoritative source for these requirements?
Ofcom publishes the codes of practice and guidance at ofcom.org.uk, and the legislation itself is on legislation.gov.uk. These pages summarise our reading of that material for platform teams; they are not legal advice and Ofcom's own documents take precedence.
Detection and age assurance that produces evidence
Tuteliq detects grooming, bullying, self-harm, exploitation and fraud as behaviour rather than keywords, and returns the rationale, confidence and audit trail your risk assessment has to point at.