Boom in illegal porn sites following Online Safety Act age verifications

Under the Online Safety Act, tech firms running sites in the UK must limit access to adult material to those aged over 18, or face fines and sanctions.

However, figures shared exclusive with LBC from the internet monitoring company Similarweb, shows platforms created since July 2025, when the new powers came into force, have boomed with some experiencing 300% more visitors, while ‘major’ porn sites have lost up to half of theirs. One emerging website’s traffic jumped more than 800% in a month - from 1.5 million to 13.7 million users.

LBC was made aware of dozens of sites that are easily accessible to children without age-verification measures.

Read more: Three quarters of Brits back tougher online safety laws

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The Lucy Faithfull foundation, which works to prevent child sexual abuse, says it has seen evidence to suggests may be more likely to come across content that is more extreme and harmful, as an indirect consequence of the Online Safety Act.

“one in four of those people had seen content on those unregulated sites that had actually made them uncomfortable. They might not be looking for child sexual abuse material, but they could be exposed to it”, said Dr Alexandra Bailey, head of Psychology at the charity.

“The message that we're trying to get across is to get people to think about their online behaviour, their pornography use, and recognise some of the risks that might be associated with accessing sites that do not comply with the Online Safety Act. People might be more likely to come across content that's perhaps more extreme, content that’s more harmful, and that includes sexual images of children as well.”

The charity works with men convicted of child sexual abuse offences, as part of a rehabilitation programme. It gave LBC access to two offenders that it is working with, who have agreed to share their stories as a cautionary tale, to help prevent others following in their footsteps.

Both John and Sam admit that what they did was wrong, but claim the aren’t sexually attracted to children.

“I was always searching for this satisfaction that was never going to be found within [porn], but it promised satisfaction,” John, who’s from Scotland, said. “It’s almost like chasing the dragon.”

Like Sam, John had an escalating addiction to pornography, spending around two hours of each workday watching X-rated content. John has described having a ‘good’ and ‘normal’ life before committing the offence.

But John’s search for ‘connection’ and ‘satisfaction’ led him to an online chatroom, where he committed a crime, leading to what he described as ‘the knock’.

“The police arrive and you just think your whole world is crumbling around you. The next day I remember going out to drive in my car and praying that something would drive into me. That’s how rock bottom it is.”

Ofcom says the Online Safety Act is already making a ‘significant difference’, with more than 75 of the 100 most popular adult services in the UK now requiring age verification before access.

John hopes it’ll help protect future generations from content he was exposed to. But LBC has already identified one site complying with age verification that has been known to host child sex abuse.

Sam is less optimistic about the regulations. He was convicted after viewing illegal images online: “Two clicks later, you could be well into this kind of material.

“They’re not far from the surface. They’re not buried deep behind hidden links or anything like that. It's pretty front and centre. It’s hiding in plain sight.”

Sam lost his job, became separated from his family and experienced suicidal thoughts after being confronted with his crime. The man, from the south of England, is worried that people trying to subvert the rules could easily be driven towards unregulated sites.

“You tell someone they can't do something, they are immediately going to go and try and do that. And so, they're going to try and bypass these filters. For those that are savvy, they’ll go to the dark niches of the internet. You notice the material drifts into things that you would have been … well, repulsed by a few years ago. It’s a slippery slope.”

Although John seems more positive about the Act, he is also concerned about people trying to bypass it: “You’re running into a very dangerous crime. You’re just putting yourself at risk.

“If you’re a bookie putting that bet on like ‘Is this person really more likely to do something that he’s going to regret?’ Then yeah, you’re probably more in that higher risk category.”

The regulator has investigated dozens of sites and issued more than £3 million in fines in the past year, but research from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation found nearly half of porn watchers in the UK said they have accessed unrestricted sites after the Online Safety Act took effect.

John is concerned justice alone can’t effectively tackle child sex offences - he believes a public health approach alongside justice would be more effective: “I don’t think we can arrest our way out of this situation that we find ourselves in, where it is happening more and more and more.

“There are consequences, too - when you do something wrong you have to pay the price for it and you have to take responsibility for what you have done. But if we can stop people before they get to that point, then that makes a massive difference.

“We have to have a difficult conversation and it’s great that we’re able to do it today. My hope is that someone is able to identify - even in a small way - and go off and go like ‘Actually, I need to go and get help with it.’”

John and Sam’s names have been changed to protect their identities. Both have completed their sentences.