Dating apps are no longer left entirely to police themselves. The UK’s Online Safety Act places legal duties on services that let users interact, and dating services are named in the government’s own explainer. This article summarises what the government and Ofcom, the regulator, say those duties involve, and what they mean in practice for someone using a dating app. The Act’s duties on platforms are described by the government as applying nationwide across the UK, and to overseas companies with links to the UK.
Dating services are in scope
According to the government’s explainer, the Act applies broadly to services that allow users to post content online or interact with each other, and it expressly includes dating services alongside social media, forums and messaging platforms. It also applies to services provided by companies outside the UK if they have links to the UK, such as a significant UK user base or the UK as a target market.
Illegal content duties
User-to-user services must put in place systems and processes to reduce the risk of their service being used for illegal activity, and mechanisms for removing illegal content when detected. The explainer lists priority offences that platforms must act against, including child sexual abuse, fraud, terrorism and intimate image abuse. Beyond that list, they must remove illegal content where there is an individual victim, actual or intended, where users flag it or where they become aware of it by other means. The government stresses that the duties are not just about removing existing content but also about stopping it appearing at all.
Ofcom’s guidance for dating and social discovery services adds detail. It says services must maintain clear terms and conditions, provide accessible complaint mechanisms for illegal and harmful content, review and remove content they reasonably believe to be illegal, and carry out illegal content risk assessments covering 17 categories.
The risks Ofcom names for dating services
Ofcom identifies romance fraud, intimate image abuse and sextortion, and harassment and stalking as harms on dating platforms. It cites survey data that 29% of adult internet users have experienced romance or dating scams, and that 11% of sextortion cases involved initial contact via dating services. Harassment and stalking, Ofcom says, can include continuous unwanted contact, fake profiles created after blocking and monitoring of the victim’s activity.
Age checks
Ofcom says dating and social discovery services that permit the sharing of pornographic content are required to implement highly effective age assurance to stop under-18s encountering it, in public spaces such as profiles and in private interactions such as direct messages. The government’s explainer says platforms publishing their own pornographic content were required to introduce robust age checks, with that duty coming into force on 17 January 2025. Services likely to be accessed by children must also prevent access to harmful and age-inappropriate content.
New criminal offences
The explainer lists six offences that took effect on 31 January 2024: cyberflashing, epilepsy trolling, intimate image abuse, encouraging serious self-harm, false information causing non-trivial harm and threatening communications. It notes that convictions have already been made for cyberflashing and threatening communications. Those offences target individuals rather than platforms, and their territorial extent should be checked offence by offence. We cover the cyberflashing offence in detail in a separate guide.
What Ofcom can do, and what it does not do for individuals
The explainer says Ofcom can impose fines of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater, and in extreme cases can direct payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers to stop working with a site. Senior managers can face criminal liability for failing to respond to information requests or for non-compliance with child safety enforcement notices.
For users, there is an important limit. Ofcom’s dating guidance says it provides guidance but does not directly handle individual user complaints about dating platforms. The services themselves must manage user reports. In practice that means your first port of call for a problem on an app is that app’s own reporting and complaint tools, and for anything criminal you would involve the police.
Using the rules to your advantage
- Report through the app. Platforms are expected to provide accessible reporting tools and to act on illegal content flagged to them.
- Keep your own record. Since Ofcom does not handle individual cases, keep screenshots and dates yourself in case you need to report to police.
- Do not treat the law as a guarantee. The duties are about systems and processes and reducing risk. They do not mean every fake profile or scam attempt will be caught before it reaches you.
- Expect age checks. If an app permits pornographic content, it is expected to use highly effective age assurance, so being asked to verify your age is consistent with what Ofcom describes.
The bottom line
The Online Safety Act explicitly covers dating services, requiring them to reduce illegal content, provide reporting tools, assess risks and, where pornographic content is allowed, use highly effective age checks. Ofcom can fine non-compliant services heavily, but it does not handle individual complaints, so use the app’s reporting tools and report crimes to police. The duties on platforms apply across the UK, while the criminal offences it created need to be checked nation by nation.