LONDON—Ofcom, the United Kingdom's digital regulator, on Thursday announced new enforcement investigations targeting age verification non-compliance across at least 22 adult tube sites owned by five parent companies from around the world.
"These sites have been prioritized based on the risk of harm they pose and their user numbers, including where there have been significant increases in their user numbers since the 25 July deadline," reads a statement from Ofcom. "Collectively, these sites have over 8 million unique monthly UK visitors."
Companies being investigated by Ofcom are as follows: Cyberitic, LLC, Web Prime Inc., Youngtek Solutions Ltd., ZD Media s.r.o., and the provider of xgroovy.com. As is the case for many investigations into the parent companies of adult websites by Ofcom, these sites appear to be clones of master scripts used to monetize traffic.
For example, Web Prime's sites are www.anysex.com, www.fapality.com, www.mylust.com, www.xcafe.com and www.yourlust.com. Two of the sites are similar in design. This is a common practice in the affiliate marketing segments of the adult entertainment industry.
Ofcom also announced that it is expanding investigations into the parent companies 8579 LLC and Itai Tech. Itai Tech Ltd. is the owner of a deepfake "nudify" application called Undress.cc, which is based in Norwich, England. 8579 LLC websites are similarly designed, appearing to be clones.
"As well as investigating their compliance with the requirement to introduce age checks for pornographic content, we are now also investigating whether they have failed to respond adequately to statutory information requests from Ofcom," reads a statement on the expanded investigations.
