UK Publishes Safety Rules for Online Service Providers

The United Kingdom’s internet regulator issued final safety guidelines for online service providers.

“People in the U.K. will be better protected from illegal harms online, as tech firms are now legally required to start taking action to tackle criminal activity on their platforms and make them safer by design,” Ofcom said in a news release on its website Monday (Dec. 16).

The watchdog’s codes of practice cover terror, hate, fraud, child sexual abuse or assisting/encouraging suicide, as covered by the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, per the release. The act places new safety requirements on social media platforms, search engines, messaging, gaming and dating apps, and pornographic and file-sharing sites.

Websites and apps covered by the law have until March 16 of next year to “complete an assessment to understand the risks illegal content poses to children and adults on their platform,” the release said.

The law lists more than 130 “priority offenses.” Companies that fail to comply could be fined up to 10% of global annual turnover or up to 18 million pounds (about $22.8 million), whichever number is greater.

The U.K. adopted the Online Safety Bill last year after a lengthy period of debate.

“The bill takes a zero-tolerance approach to protecting children and makes sure social media platforms are held responsible for the content they host,” the government said at the time.

Ofcom’s efforts to protect users online come amid a surge in scams, many of which originate on social media platforms.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “The State of Fraud and Financial Crime in the U.S.: What FIs Need to Know” found that scams became the dominant form of fraud this year, surpassing digital payment fraud. The share of scam-related fraud increased by 56%, and financial losses from scams rose 121%, according to the report.

“Scams now account for 23% of all fraudulent transactions, with relationship/trust and product/service scams responsible for most losses,” PYMNTS wrote last week. “These scams manipulate individuals into authorizing fraudulent transactions, often using deceptive tactics. Additionally, fraud involving compromised credentials, where individuals are tricked into revealing account details, is also on the rise.”

The rise in scams over digital payment fraud spotlights the changing strategies of fraudsters, who now take advantage of vulnerabilities in human behavior rather than targeting technical flaws in digital payment systems.