Porn company handed record fine by UK regulator for failing to verify ages

A porn company has just been handed the largest fine ever issued under the Online Safety Act.

8579 LLC, a pornography provider with a clutch of popular sites, was fined a record £1.35m for not having age checks in place, plus £50,000 for failing to respond to an information request. Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator that issued the fines, said if the firm does not immediately implement highly effective age assurance, it will also face a daily penalty of £1,000.

It will also be fined £250 a day until it responds to the regulator's requests for information, including a full list of all of its sites. After 60 days, if it still has not responded, the fines will be capped.

From July, all pornography providers with UK audiences had to start properly checking the ages of their users. A tick-box asking users if they were over 18 was no longer considered a proper age check, and major providers introduced technology to properly verify their users' ages.

Ofcom says it was tracking those that did not, and investigations were soon launched into some of the biggest non-compliant sites. 8579 LLC was one of the companies being investigated.

Up until at least 19 November 2025, 8579 LLC failed to implement highly effective age assurance on three of its major sites, according to the regulator, with one other site continuing to break age verification rules. Read more from Sky News:Will the 'tobacco trials' come back to haunt tech giants?Universal vaccine for cold, flu, COVID and allergies 'a step closer' George Lusty, director of enforcement at Ofcom, said: "We've been clear that adult sites must deploy robust age checks to protect children in the UK from seeing porn.

"Those that fail to do this - or ignore legally binding requests from us - should expect to face fines." Ofcom's investigation into 8579 LLC initially included two more sites run by the company, but they were transferred to another business registered in the Seychelles before Ofcom could announce its preliminary findings. Sky News has attempted to contact 8579 LLC for comment through its websites..