Age Verification in the United Kingdom
Meet Ofcom's Highly Effective Age Assurance (HEAA) standard under the Online Safety Act. Privacy-preserving verification recognized by the UK regulatory framework.
Regulatory Context
The UK Online Safety Act Part 5 commenced 17 January 2025 for pornography, with Part 3 codes effective 25 July 2025 for user-to-user and search services. Ofcom assesses age assurance methods against Highly Effective Age Assurance (HEAA) criteria: technical accuracy, robustness, reliability, and fairness.
Ofcom recognizes multiple methods including digital identity services, DIATF-certified wallets with selective attribute disclosure, and reusable age tokens. Self-declaration is explicitly insufficient.
Enforcement is active: 92 investigations opened, 76 under the age assurance programme. Fines include 1M GBP (AVS Group) and 800K GBP (Kick). Pornhub traffic dropped 77% in the UK. An additional 5 million age checks daily have been reported since July 2025. Penalties can reach up to 18 million GBP or 10% of global qualifying revenue.
How Passtru Complies
Passtru's verification approach aligns with Ofcom's recognized methods for HEAA. The attestation-based model provides selective attribute disclosure, delivering only the age verification result without exposing underlying identity data.
51 providers are DIATF-certified on the DVS Register as of February 2026. HM Treasury officially recognized DIATF-certified providers for AML CDD in February 2026, validating the trust framework that Passtru's architecture supports.
Technical Implementation
The Passtru SDK integrates into your platform's age gate. Users verify through their vault, and your platform receives a signed attestation confirming age eligibility. The verification meets HEAA criteria for accuracy and robustness.
For platforms requiring DIATF certification, Passtru's architecture is designed to support the trust framework requirements, including selective attribute disclosure and reusable age credentials.
Ready to deploy age verification in United Kingdom?
Get started with Passtru's privacy-first verification for United Kingdom.