Children could find ways to ‘bypass' porn age verification checks, charity warns
Children's charity Barnado's said children are 'too easily' able to access extreme content including rape, incest, domestic abuse, and child sexual abuse while online - something they hope new measures implementing age gates on porn sites will help prevent.
But speaking to The Independent, they cautioned sites must take an evolving approach to the new legislation rather than 'remaining stuck on the solutions that are easy to implement now'.
From Friday, anyone accessing adult content sites such as Pornhub and OnlyFans must verify that they are over the age of 18. This could be done through a number of methods, including banking details, ID checks, or dedicated online age verification services. Sites that fail to comply could face heavy fines through Ofcom, in what the regulator called a bid to stop an 'age blind' internet.
Becky Rice, senior policy adviser at the charity said they 'welcomed' the new legislation but called on Ofcom and porn providers to monitor any 'unintended consequences' of the measures.
'At Barnardo's, we see the harm that normalising pornography can cause children, distorting their attitudes towards healthy relationships, sex and consent,' she said. 'Barnardo's has long called for the introduction of highly effective age assurance measures to limit the harmful content children have access to online, and we welcome these measures as part of implementing the Online Safety Act.'
She added the charity has supported children as young as seven who have accessed pornography sites. Recent data from Dignify shows the youngest reported age for first seeing online pornography was just 3 years old.
'The online world creates many fantastic opportunities for children to learn and connect – but for far too long, it has been too easy for them to stumble across extreme pornographic content.
'The material children are seeing online includes rape, incest, domestic abuse and child sexual abuse. We see first-hand that watching this content harms children's mental health and can normalise aggressive and harmful sexual activity.'
She said the charity had also supported children whose own abuse had been 'normalised' by content they found online, including a 15-year-old girl who had been abused by an older relative for years.
'She turned to pornography to try and understand her own sexual abuse, but the content she found depicted older relatives having sex with young girls and the girls enjoying it,' Ms Rice explained. 'It wasn't until she disclosed her abuse that she realised that it was not normal.'
However, the charity have warned that while 'robust' verification checks are a welcome change, pornography providers must work to stay a step ahead to make sure their measures continue to be effective.
'No checks are completely infallible, and we are concerned that children may be able to find ways to bypass age verification,' she said.
She added there would be a 'a period of learning' for the public as the new age gates come into place. 'The public need to be aware of what age assurance is, how it works, and that it does not compromise their privacy or personal information.
'All platforms have a responsibility for keeping children safe online and preventing them from accessing harmful content. They also have a duty to protect the data of their users. Implementing highly effective age assurance will mean that platforms need to process some form of personal data to verify a user's age.
'However, Ofcom as the regulator, has published clear guidance to platforms on users' rights within data protection law, including ensuring that the minimum amount of data about a user is collected, how it can be used and how it should be kept secure.'
An Ofcom spokesperson said the new rules follow decades of an 'age blind internet' when sites and apps that host porn 'have simply not been doing any meaningful checks to see if children were using their service,' adding 'that ends now'.
'These age checks will help stop young children from stumbling across porn,' they continued. 'And while the new rules have only been in place for a matter of hours, we will be actively assessing compliance to make sure platforms have age checks in place and that they are highly effective. Companies that fall short can expect to face enforcement action.
'We have been clear that sites must not encourage or direct users to get around age checks, including through the use of VPNs. But VPNs are not illegal and there are legitimate uses for them. People should be aware that children and adults who use a VPN to bypass age checks, will not benefit from the wider protections offered by our online safety rules.'
Ofcom previously said the new measures were 'key' to helping to protect children from harmful content when they're online.
'Strong age checks can be done effectively, safely, and in a way that protects your privacy,' a post on their website said. 'As with everything you do online, you should exercise a degree of caution and judgement when giving over personal information.
'In the UK people are familiar with having to prove their age in the offline world to buy age-restricted goods like alcohol and tobacco. Age checks to access online pornography are just the same. It will help stop children from encountering pornography online, in the same way that a child should not be able to simply walk into a shop and buy a pornographic DVD or magazine.'
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Ball long waged his campaign from Rampton and Broadmoor secure mental hospitals, but is now doing so from his hostel room on a council estate near Notting Hill, west London. He has also been spending the tens of thousands of pounds he claims he saved up in benefit payments on trips to Barbados and Japan. Tellingly, he complains he never left Tokyo airport, because he admitted to his criminal record on arrival and was deported. Last night, a Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'Restricted patients can be recalled back to hospital if their mental health deteriorates such that the risk they pose becomes unmanageable in the community.' The Daily Mail understands thorough risk assessments are meant to be made on 'restricted patients' such as Ball before they are freed into the community, and doctors have the power to 'manage the risk to the public'. Fantasy world of sick loner and his extraordinary bid to kidnap a young Princess Anne from her limo on The Mall that ended when she told him: 'Not bloody likely!' The last time a journalist approached Ian Ball – the man who tried to kidnap a princess – he shot him in the chest. Back on a bloody night in 1974, Ball also attempted to murder two policemen and shot a chauffeur, while trying to drag Princess Anne from her limousine, shackle her in his hideout, and demand £3million ransom from the Queen. The Princess, who turned 75 last month, was later revealed to have rejected his instructions to join him by replying: 'Not bloody likely.' Small wonder that amid admitting his crimes, and being detained in secure mental hospitals as a schizophrenic, Ball said at the time: 'I suppose I'll be locked up for the rest of my life.' Yet half a century on, now aged 77 himself, he was last week sitting on a canal-side bench not three miles from Buckingham Palace. So I approached this once trigger-happy kidnapper with apprehension, despite his aged stoop. For he has been waging an intensifying campaign to prove the kidnap plan was a 'hoax', worrying residents of his old home town. His campaign involves a disturbing 'autobiographical novel', a website, Facebook and Twitter postings, offers of rewards anywhere from £50 to £1million, mass leafleting and visits to old west London haunts. For decades – firstly from within Broadmoor, from where he was quietly freed in 2019, and now in the outside world – he has been claiming his kidnap 'hoax' was cooked up with the knowledge of an officer from a local police station he knew only as 'Frank'. Ball claims the untraceable – and almost certainly non-existent – 'Frank' was meant to have removed the gunpowder from his bullets and substituted another woman for Princess Anne. And within minutes of sitting beside him on the canal-side bench near Notting Hill last week, Ball told me: 'The whole idea of performing the hoax was to get the publicity so I could write my autobiography, and I expected to get £10,000 in royalties. 'To prove my innocence I need to prove the existence of Frank. That will prove I had reason to believe it was all a hoax.' He denied Princess Anne had uttered her infamous line 'Not bloody likely', laughing as he evidently doubted it was her in the car that night. 'She said, 'You just go away and nobody will think any more about it', which fuelled the belief that I thought it was a hoax,' Ball insisted. 'At the time I thought it wasn't Princess Anne in the car. She looked nothing like Princess Anne. The personality was nothing like Princess Anne.' Despite having only a fleeting moment in the presence of the Princess in the most extreme of circumstances 51 years ago, he claimed: 'If it had been the Princess there, she would have told me to 'F*** off', wouldn't she. That's her personality.' What actually happened on The Mall near Buckingham Palace on March 20, 1974 – along with the three years' planning Ball put into it – was laid out in the Old Bailey two months later. Attorney General Samuel Silkin QC, prosecuting, said the facts were 'stranger than fiction', adding: 'There can be no doubt Ball conceived over many years a horrifying plan, with almost obsessive care and detail, to kidnap single-handed in the heart of London a member of the Royal Family.' Ball, then 26, was brought up on a council estate in Cowley, near Uxbridge, west London, largely by his mother Violet, after his father, George, died when he was five. On leaving his secondary modern school with six O-levels, he raced through seven jobs, including at a funeral directors, never interacting with colleagues, and by his own barrister's account with 'no girlfriends, no friends at all'. He had left home in his early twenties, a relative said later, after spending three years living with his mother but not speaking a word to her, communicating only in written notes. Diagnosed as mentally ill during that time, he declined in-patient treatment. Then, living a lonely life in a bedsit in Bayswater, west London – a short walk from his hostel now – Ball plotted 'the perfect crime' to raise money for fast cars and luxury. He wrote a list of potential victims, telling police he settled on Princess Anne as 'the only girl in the Royal Family and she would have been the easiest. I have seen her and her husband out riding'. He flew to Spain in 1973 and legally bought two pistols, a .38 calibre and a .22, bringing them back through Heathrow's 'Nothing to declare' lane. He had already paid for private flying lessons, while refusing his mother's demands for rent, and gained his private pilot's licence at Biggin Hill airport in Kent. Ball also got a driving licence in the name of 'John Williams', one of several false identities he used having been inspired by Frederick Forsyth's 1971 thriller The Day Of The Jackal. After renting a house near Sandhurst, Berkshire, home of newlywed Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, he stocked it with bedding, food, nightwear and a toothbrush, and for several days stalked her movements. He planned to hold her there before piloting a private plane to Zurich – with the £3million ransom and the princess in handcuffs – then send her back on arrival. Ball's ludicrous ransom note – addressed to the Queen and beginning, 'Your daughter has been kidnapped' – demanded £3million in used £5 notes 'in 30 unlocked suitcases' to be brought to his waiting plane at London Airport (now Heathrow). He said the Queen herself would have to come to see him – proving her identity by giving a sample signature, rather than just holding her picture on one of the 600,000 used fivers by her face. The Queen was also expected to bring 'a free pardon to cover the kidnapping and anything connected with it, from parking offences to the murder of any police officers'. On March 20, Ball phoned the Buckingham Palace press office and asked where the princess would be that night. Astonishingly, they told him. So he was lurking in his Ford Escort, handcuffs and Valium in the boot, when Anne's Austin Vanden Plas Princess limousine was driven away from a City of London charity film screening. Chauffeur Alex Callender was at the wheel and armed royal protection officer Inspector James Beaton was in the passenger seat. Anne, then 23, was in the back, along with Captain Phillips and lady-in-waiting Rowena Brassey. Ball tailed them down Fleet Street and The Strand, around Trafalgar Square, then down The Mall. In his trashy, thriller-style book, To Kidnap A Princess, Ball says his engine 'screamed in protest' as he hit 70mph before skidding to a halt in front of the royal limousine, forcing it to stop. Bearded and wearing a raincoat, he ran to Princess Anne's door, brandishing both his guns, and ordered her to get out. Inspector Beaton emerged and drew his gun, so Ball shot him in the shoulder. The bodyguard's gun then jammed. Ball shouted, 'Put down your gun or I'll shoot her', and, wounded, Inspector Beaton complied. Ball then attempted to encourage and pull the Princess out – Captain Phillips pulling back on her other arm – as she uttered her 'Not bloody likely' line. Inspector Beaton crawled back, put his hand in front of Ball's guns and was shot in the palm, before taking a third bullet in the chest. A fragment of the bullet remains in his hand to this day. Ball shot chauffeur Mr Callender in the chest before blasting PC Michael Hills, 22 – who was rushing to the scene – in the stomach. He was injured but survived only because the bullet hit the police notebook in his pocket. Daily Mirror journalist Brian McConnell, who happened to be passing, leapt from his taxi to reason with Ball before he, too, was shot in the chest. Only the chance arrival of 6ft 2in, 17-stone former heavyweight boxer Ronnie 'The Geezer' Russell in a cleaning firm van turned the tide. Thinking, he said later, 'that's a liberty – he needs sorting', Russell subdued Ball with several massive punches as police arrived and bundled him to the floor. Ball then – as now – displayed no remorse, saying: 'They were getting in my way so I had to shoot them. Well, the police, that's their job. They expect to be shot. I took a chance of getting shot – so why shouldn't they?' After his guilty plea, John Hazan QC, defending, said he was 'mad', and had been 'led by a voice either of his late father or God'. In mitigation, Mr Hazan said the ransom was intended to be a donation to the NHS to improve the mental-health provision that had failed Ball. It was only last week, when I asked whether the NHS would have been likely to accept £3million in used fivers that Ball admitted: 'That was rubbish. I couldn't think of anything else to say. I was quite happy with my treatment in the NHS.' During his appearance at the Old Bailey, no one in court doubted that Ball was both guilty and mentally ill. Some 45 years in Rampton and Broadmoor secure mental hospitals ensued. Then – unknown till now – his freedom came in 2019. In an extraordinary 'autobiographical novel', To Kidnap A Princess, self-published in 2022 and for sale on Amazon, he tells how he 'revealed' his hoax excuse in 1974 after six months inside. He remains amazed he was not released immediately. While the nature of the book is masked flimsily with the statement, 'This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination', it is in his name, begins with the attempt to kidnap Princess Anne, and proceeds through Rampton and Broadmoor. Many incidents recounted in its pages are verifiable elsewhere, such as a 2006 letter he had published in the radical newspaper Class War, and a website he briefly created from behind bars in 2005. The book, which he compares to prison classics such as The Shawshank Redemption and Papillon, details frightening delusions – chiefly that the kidnap involved only a fake Princess Anne, no working bullets, and no injury. The plan, he claims, was just to generate publicity so he could write a 'best-selling' autobiography about his 'prank'. The mysterious 'Frank', whom he claims knew all about the 'hoax', has always been the key, elusive figure. Ball claims in the book that he has 'extra sensory powers', psychic abilities to reverse his age and that of the beautiful women he 'makes love' to. He can also, he writes, become immortal, teleport himself and cure all the world's illnesses. For decades he has described himself as a 'very dangerous working-class dissenter' wrongly incarcerated as a 'political prisoner' because Britain's 'upper-class dictatorship' fears his 'dissenting philosophies'. He claims his letters to various prime ministers, sent from Broadmoor, 'have resulted in the total transformation of society', from Tony Blair's mantra of 'education, education, education', to the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service and the minimum wage. The late Queen is a focus, too – with Ball suspecting she was 'hoodwinked by Frank's associates' and was the 'ring leader' behind his incarceration. If she refused to sign a document confirming his psychic powers, he threatened to 'inflame public opinion and make sure she was sentenced to spend the rest of her natural life in prison'. The book's afterword is clear: 'Are you a budding Hercule Poirot? You can earn £1,000.' He explains he is seeking to prove the 'hoax' kidnap actually took place on March 20, 1975, not 1974, and would pay for evidence. 'It's a knotty problem' he writes, warning 'Frank' could 'nobble' foreign newspaper publishers to mock up fake, re-dated papers to obscure the truth. Those who can help are told to write to a PO Box near his hostel. Approached last week, Ball tried to row back on the most extreme claims, insisting that some parts of the book were fiction. He said he did not believe he had psychic powers, the key to immortality, or to have effected 'the total transformation of society'. 'That's just rubbish,' he told me. Ball claims even now, unconvincingly, that he belatedly accepts the kidnap 'hoax' happened, but says he is innocent because he thought the bullets would not fire and 'Anne' was an imposter, something he still suspects. He told me by text, too, that he remains a 'very dangerous working-class dissenter'. His endless quest continues for the elusive 'Frank' and apparent evidence in the Middlesex Advertiser of their 'pranks' together. Hence the leaflets he recruits strangers to deliver and monthly visits to a point by a London Tube station to meet anyone with evidence. None have shown up yet. Hence, too, his Facebook and X accounts, and online appeals to find someone who recalls the days when he was a prankster known as 'The Local Wag' and can confirm the existence of Frank. Do the Broadmoor doctors whom he says monitor him know of his campaign? Ball said: 'I have to tell them everything about it.' He said Princess Anne was 'presumably' informed of his release, but he had 'no reason' to contact her. And his campaign continues. Will he ever give up trying to prove he was an 'innocent, sane man'?
