Prove you’re 18 to watch porn, UK tells online users

Children in the UK will now be blocked from accessing online porn sites under plans drawn up by the British government to force owners of UK-based sites to prove their users are aged over 18.

Under the system, which will be introduced for porn websites by the end of this year if parliament passes rules being drawn up in Whitehall, children would be blocked from accessing the content, according to this week’s Sunday Telegraph.

“Atvod, an industry regulator, estimates that 200,000 children under 15 view extreme adult material each month. It says Pornhub — a site based in Luxembourg — received 112,000 visits from British boys aged 12 to 17 during one month last year,” the newspaper report.

Ideas on how the system could be used for sites based overseas are now being discussed by government officials.

Porn sites among ‘most visited’ in Arab world

In the Arab world, it was found that porn sites appear in the region’s most-visited online rankings.

At least five porn websites were among Egypt’s 100 most frequently visited online destinations in 2012, according to Alexa, a division of Amazon.com that tracks online traffic patterns globally.

The statistic, released in November 2012, showed that the five most visited porn sites in Egypt rank at numbers 15, 23, 29, 67, 83, with two X-rated sites appearing in the country’s top 25 most-browsed sites, the Anaween Arabic news website reported.

Similarly, there were seven pornographic sites in Tunisia that appear among the top 100 most visited sites, coming in at numbers 14, 16 and 20 and 49 60 and 93 and 97.

In Lebanon, the five most visited sites appeared later down the list of 100, at numbers 33, 34, 45 and 52 and 58.

But more recently, Saudi regulator, the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), expressed doubts over the accuracy of statistics and figures being published on the number of Saudis visiting porn websites.

The CITC made this observation last February in response to repeated studies indicating that Saudis “are the ones who visit these sites most.” The CITC denied the existence of statistics on Saudi nationals visiting porn websites.