Illegal content duties under the UK Online Safety Act require in-scope user-to-user and search services to take proportionate measures to protect users from illegal content, and user-to-user services must also reduce the risks of illegal activity facilitated by their services.
Use this guide to turn official requirements into scope, evidence, owner, and review decisions. This guidance is practical, source-linked, and should be validated against current legal and policy requirements before implementation.
Structured answer sets in this page tree.
Cited legal and guidance references.
The illegal content duties are the Online Safety Act duties for in-scope user-to-user and search services. They require providers to take proportionate measures to protect users from illegal content, and user-to-user services must also reduce the risks of illegal activity facilitated by their services. This page helps you determine when those duties apply, who owns each action, the required evidence, and the review path before escalation.
Start by deciding whether the service is in scope and which illegal-content, children-safety, age-assurance, user-empowerment, transparency, complaints, risk-assessment, or Ofcom enforcement duty is triggered. The useful answer should name the exact trigger, affected product or process, required action, owner, evidence, and escalation point.
Keep the Online Safety Act source, service-scope decision, user-to-user/search feature map, risk assessment, code-of-practice mapping, age-assurance evidence, and Ofcom-facing record together.
Ownership should sit with the team that can change service design, moderation, recommender systems, age assurance, reporting, complaints, terms, or transparency data, with legal and trust-safety review.
Evidence should show service categorisation, illegal-content risk assessment, children access assessment, children risk assessment, mitigation controls, age-assurance decisions, terms/complaints records, and Ofcom reporting readiness.
Most Online Safety Act mistakes happen at the boundary between user-to-user, search, pornography, category, child-access, illegal-content, and transparency duties.
Use this section before launching a user feature, recommender change, moderation change, age-assurance flow, complaint process, or transparency-reporting process.
Use an Online Safety Act workflow that captures service scope, user groups, risk assessment, code mapping, child-access status, mitigation owner, evidence, and Ofcom escalation path.
The output should be a service-scope memo, risk assessment, children access assessment, mitigation plan, age-assurance decision, complaint workflow, or transparency-report evidence pack.
Use this UK Online Safety Act guide to turn Illegal Content Duties Explained into owners, evidence requests, review checkpoints, and reusable operating records inside Sorena.
Turn Illegal Content Duties Explained into scoped questions, evidence fields, and review tasks.
Use Research Copilot to answer follow-up questions with cited source material.
Review scope, evidence, owners, and the next compliance actions with Sorena.
"Notice Online Safety Act - Illegal Content Codes of Practice 2024: explanatory memorandum Published 17 December 2024 Contents"
"This document section concerns the Protection of children codes of practice under the Online Safety Act (OSA)"
"The Online Safety Act 2023 (the Act) protects children and adults online."
"The Online Safety Act 2023 (the Act) is a new set of laws that protects children and adults online."
"Providers must use risk and evidence-based approaches to ensure there is no room for illegal content and activity on their platforms."