Ofcom fines 4chan £20,000 under the Online Safety Act. 4Chan replies ‘F U’
TL;DR: OFCOM fines 4Chan, the notorious image-based bulletin board, £20,000 for non-compliance with the Online Safety Act – they don’t care. Ofcom has issued a £20,000 provisional penalty against 4chan under the Online Safety Act, stating that the platform failed to meet several statutory duties. The move signals how Ofcom intends to use its new […]
BBC Reporting on Success of Age Verification debunked
TL;DR: The BBC’s own poor reporting on the success of age verification is one of the reasons some people distrust mainstream media, selective reporting helps nobody. The BBC recently published a piece claiming that UK visits to major porn sites have dropped sharply since the new Online Safety Act age verification rules took effect on […]
The Tea App Hack: A Stark Warning About Age Verification Vulnerabilities
TL;DR: Data breach of the women only safety app, Tea, demonstrates what we’ve ben saying for a while now. The Online Safety Act puts people at risk if there’s data breach of the age verifying software providers. The recent security breach of the Tea dating safety app serves as a sobering reminder of the inherent […]
Online Safety Act: Age Verification
TL;DR: The Online Safety Act age verification defenders are clutching at straws, ignoring fundamental human rights violations and the Act’s absurd failure to distinguish between Spotify and porn sites. Their arguments fall apart under scrutiny. Since I wrote my previous post about the Online Safety Act in March, there have been a few more developments, […]
What Are Cookies? And Why This ICO Action Matters
Explainer: What are Cookies? And why this matters Unless you’ve been living under a digital rock for the past decade, you’ve probably encountered those annoying pop-ups asking you to “accept cookies” on virtually every website you visit. But here’s the thing: most people have absolutely no idea what they’re actually agreeing to. They just click […]
The Online Safety Act UK – And how we’ve got it so wrong
TL;DR: People making the laws are either too stupid or fail to understand that the Internet and, its users, don’t recognise borders. This is why The Online Safety Act will fail. Monday 17th March sees the ‘Illegal Harms Codes of Practice‘ coming into force as part of the Online Safety Act (OSA). A piece of […]