The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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London, United Kingdom: The number—one million pounds—lands heavy, doesn’t it? On Wednesday, U.K. regulator Ofcom brought the hammer down on AVS Group Ltd., slapping the company with a penalty worth roughly $1.3 million after concluding it hadn’t bothered to put truly solid age checks in place across 18 adult websites. One of those moments where you read the headline and feel that quiet uh-oh ripple through the industry.
Back in July, it was reported that Ofcom had widened its lens, investigating four companies operating adult platforms to see whether they were meeting the strict age-assurance demands of the U.K.’s Online Safety Act (OSA). The law isn’t coy—if you publish pornography, you’re required to use “highly effective” age checks specifically designed to keep minors out. AVS Group was on that list.
By October, Ofcom confirmed that its inquiry had uncovered what it called “reasonable grounds” to believe AVS was falling short of those obligations, triggering a provisional notice and a 20-working-day window for the company to respond. It was the regulatory equivalent of a warning shot across the bow, a chance to explain—or fix—what already looked shaky.
That chance didn’t change the outcome. In a fresh update posted Thursday, Ofcom stated, “From 25 July 2025 until at least 25 November 2025, each of the AVS Group websites either did not implement any age assurance measures or implemented measures that were not highly effective at determining whether a user was a child.”
Zooming in on the details, the agency took particular issue with the company’s photo-upload checks, noting that AVS “deployed a photo upload check on its services that does not include liveness detection and as such is vulnerable to circumvention by children (for example, by uploading a photo of an adult). Ofcom considers that this method is not capable of being highly effective within the meaning of the Act.” In other words: nice try, not even close.
The AVS-run websites scrutinized by the regulator include pornzog.com, txxx.com, txxx.tube, upornia.com, hdzog.com, hdzog.tube, thegay.com, thegay.tube, ooxxx.com, hotmovs.com, hclips.com, vjav.com, pornl.com, voyeurhit.com, manysex.com, tubepornclassic.com, shemalez.com and shemalez.tube.
On top of the main penalty, Ofcom tacked on an additional £50,000 fine for AVS’s failure to respond properly to information requests during the investigation—a sort of regulatory side-eye for not cooperating when questions were asked.
And here’s the real mic-drop: what AVS received isn’t even close to the upper ceiling. Ofcom has the authority to levy fines of up to £18 million or 10% of a company’s qualifying global revenue, whichever is higher. Beyond money, the agency can seek court orders pushing payment providers or advertisers to cut ties—or, in the most extreme cases, require U.K. internet service providers to block access to sites entirely. It’s a reminder that in the new regulatory climate, the fines are loud… but the silence that follows losing access can be even louder.
