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: The Tea app hack 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 news of the Tea app hack, a dating safety app, serves as a sobering reminder of the inherent risks associated with […]
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
TL;DR: What are cookies is a common question for anyone dealing with websites, and the answer affects every UK user and business. Cookies are small text files that remember your activity online, and they range from essential tools that keep a site working to advertising trackers that follow you across the internet. Most users accept […]
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 […]