New rules have been unveiled to protect children online, which include limiting direct messages and removing them from suggested friend lists.
They form part of Ofcom’s first draft codes of practice under the Online Safety Act, which was signed into law a week ago.
It focuses on illegal material online such as grooming content, fraud and child sexual abuse.
Platforms will be required by law to keep children’s location data private – and restrict who can send direct messages to them.
Ofcom will publish more rules in the next few months around online safety and the promotion of material related to suicide and self-harm, with each new code requiring parliamentary approval before it is put in place.
It hopes the codes announced today will be enforced by the end of next year.
The code also encourages larger platforms to use hash matching technology to identify illegal images of abuse – and tools to detect websites hosting such material.
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Ofcom said services should use automatic detection systems to remove posts linked to stolen financial information, and block accounts run by proscribed organisations.
Tech firms must also nominate an accountable person, Ofcom said, who reports to senior management on compliance with the code.
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Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes told Sky News: “I think without regulation it isn’t getting better fast enough, and in some areas it is going in the wrong direction.
“The more that we see innovation in things like AI, it means I’m afraid it’s easier for the bad guys to create fraudulent material – that ends up cheating us of our money – and it makes it easier to prey on children.”
Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said the publication of the first codes marked a “crucial” step in making the Online Safety Act a reality by “cleaning up the Wild West of social media and making the UK the safest place in the world to be online”.
She added: “Before the bill became law, we worked with Ofcom to make sure they could act swiftly to tackle the most harmful illegal content first.
“By working with companies to set out how they can comply with these duties, the first of their kind anywhere in the world, the process of implementation starts today.”
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The rapper, gambling and the online world
Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the Internet Watch Foundation, said: “We stand ready to work with Ofcom, and with companies looking to do the right thing to comply with the new laws.
“It’s right that protecting children and ensuring the spread of child sexual abuse imagery is stopped is top of the agenda.
“It’s vital companies are proactive in assessing and understanding the potential risks on their platforms, and taking steps to make sure safety is designed in.
“Making the internet safer does not end with this bill becoming an act. The scale of child sexual abuse, and the harms children are exposed to online, have escalated in the years this legislation has been going through parliament.
“Companies in scope of the regulations now have a huge opportunity to be part of a real step forward in terms of child safety.”
The former head of royal protection says he warned the Royal Family about Mohamed al Fayed’s reputation before Princess Diana took her sons on holiday with him.
The women say he raped and sexually assaulted them while they worked at the luxury department store, prowling the shop floor and “cherry-picking” women to be brought to his executive suite.
Now, Mr Davies says people were aware of the Egyptian businessman’s reputation as far back as the 1990s, and that he raised concerns about him to the Royal Family.
“This was a man who I would be concerned [about] if a relative of mine was going on holiday with him, let alone the future king and his brother and their mother, Princess Diana,” Dai Davies told Sky News.
In July 1997, a month before she died, Princess Diana went on holiday with Fayed and his wife to their residence in St Tropez.
She took the two young princes with her – a holiday Prince Harry described as “heaven” in his 2023 memoir Spare.
“I was horrified because I was aware of some of the allegations even then that were going around,” said Mr Davies.
“I was aware that he had tried very hard to ingratiate himself with the Royal Family and obviously knowing, as I did, the reputation he was alleged [to have] then, I was concerned, and I took the opportunity to inform the Royal Family.”
Mr Davies says he was told: “Her Majesty is aware.”
“The rest is history,” he said.
Buckingham Palace told Sky News it had no comment on the allegations.
Fulham ‘deeply disturbed’ by allegations
Fulham FC, a football club that was owned by Fayed between 1997 and 2013, has saidit is “deeply troubled” by the dozens of “disturbing” sexual abuse allegations against the businessman.
The Premier League club also said it is “in the process of establishing whether anyone at the club is or has been affected” by this alleged behaviour.
However, Gaute Haugenes, who managed the club’s women’s team between 2001 and 2003, told the BBC extra precautions were taken to protect female players from Fayed.
“We were aware he liked young, blonde girls. So we just made sure that situations couldn’t occur. We protected the players.”
The legal team involved in a civil claim against Harrods for allegedly failing to provide a safe system of work for its employees said they aimed to seek justice for the victims of a “vast web of abuse”.
Lily Allen says she had her children “for all the wrong reasons,” at a “high pressure” point in her career when she felt “overwhelmed”.
The singer and actress had her two daughters, Marnie, 12 and Ethel, 11, with her ex-husband Sam Cooper when she was in her mid-20s.
By the time she became a mum, she’d already had hit singles including Smile and The Fear, released two studio albums and received a Brit Award for best British female solo artist.
Speaking about motherhood on the BBC podcast Miss Me?, which Allen hosts with her long-time friend Miquita Oliver, she said: “I think I had children for all the wrong reasons, really.
“Because I was yearning for unconditional love, which I haven’t felt in my life since I was a child.”
The now 39-year-old star added: “And also, my career was at such high speed, high pressure, and I felt like very overwhelmed by what was happening. I just didn’t get much respite you know?
“And I felt like the only way to stop people hassling me was to say, ‘It’s not about me, actually this is about this other person that’s inside me’.
When asked by Oliver if it worked, Allen says: “Yeah, they did leave me alone. I don’t think I really understood what was happening, what I got myself into.”
The daughter of actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen, she went on to discuss her own childhood.
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“My mum, bless her, had children really early as well, and she really struggled. But she doesn’t really talk about the struggle. And so… She inadvertently gaslit me into thinking it was, you know, easy.
“You just sort of throw the kid over your shoulder and you get on with it.
“Her job was very static, and in one place and went to an office and mine wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t easy. It just wasn’t easy.”
The ‘nasty scars’ caused by absent parents
Allen previously told the Radio Times podcast that while she loves her children, having them “ruined her career”.
She said her decision to prioritise them over her pop career was a decision she made so as not to inflict the “nasty scars” of being an “absent” parent onto them.
She also said the myth of having it all “really annoyed” as it simply was not true.
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Allen, whose younger brother is Game Of Thrones actor Alfie Allen, married Stranger Things star David Harbour in 2020.
Away from her music career, Allen has branched out into acting over the last few years, starring in two plays in London’s West End, and winning a role in Sky drama Dreamland last year.
An investigation has been launched after “Jail Starmer” graffiti was daubed on the window of an MP’s office.
The Met Police received an allegation of criminal damage on Saturday in relation to the incident at Clive Efford’s office in Eltham & Chislehurst, South London.
This is a new seat which was won by Labour at the general election, though in 2019 it was notionally Conservative.
On Friday night the window was painted with white graffiti which says “Jail Starmer”.
Sources told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby that an image of the vandalism has been circulating among Labour MPs’ WhatsApp groups this morning. However, Mr Efford has downplayed the incident.
There have been growing concerns about the safety of politicians in recent years, following the murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess.
MPs have described working in an increasingly hostile environment, with experiences ranging from death threats and abuse to attacks on their constituency offices and protests at their homes.
In a statement, the Met Police said: “On Saturday 21, September, police received an allegation of criminal damage to an office building in Westmount Road SE9.
“Graffiti had been daubed on the premises the previous day.
“An investigation has been launched and enquiries are ongoing.
“Anyone with information is asked to call 101 quoting CAD 2672/21Sep.”