Ofcom issues final guidance to improve online safety for women and girls

Ofcom has finalised its guidance for online service providers on reducing harms that disproportionately affect women and girls. The guidance is issued under the Online Safety Act 2023 and builds on a public consultation conducted earlier in the year. It outlines practical steps companies should take to prevent, detect and respond to a wide range of gender-based online harms, including misogynistic abuse, coordinated harassment, stalking, coercive control and image-based sexual abuse. The regulator states that these harms continue to limit the ability of women and girls to participate safely and freely online.

Key elements of the guidance include:

• Clear regulatory expectations: Ofcom confirms that the guidance combines legally required measures with additional good-practice steps that providers are encouraged to adopt. The guidance highlights existing Codes of Practice and expands on ways companies can strengthen safety-by-design approaches.

• Updated definitions of harm areas: The document introduces refined categories of online gender-based harms, including misogynistic abuse and sexual violence, coordinated harassment, stalking and coercive control, and image-based sexual abuse. These categories reflect new evidence on how harms manifest and the experiences shared by stakeholders.

• Actions required from service providers: The guidance sets out nine overarching actions focused on taking responsibility, preventing harm and providing support. Examples include working with gender-based violence experts, strengthening account security, enabling users to manage and track reports, introducing tools to prevent intimate image abuse, and using prompts to discourage abusive messages.

• Integration of safety-by-design: Providers are encouraged to embed safety considerations across service development. Suggested practices include “abusability testing”, clearer explanations of privacy settings, designing recommender systems that diversify content exposure and implementing rate limits to reduce the impact of coordinated harassment.

• Victim-focused measures: The guidance stresses the need for accessible reporting pathways and timely responses, particularly for victims of intimate image abuse and stalking. It also recommends improved signposting to support resources, including information on reporting crimes.

• Oversight and future updates: Ofcom plans to publish a follow-up report in 2027 assessing how services have adopted the guidance and whether women and girls report improved online experiences. The regulator indicates that the guidance will be updated as new harms emerge, including those linked to generative AI misuse.

The guidance represents a significant step in implementing the Online Safety Act and aims to nudge industry towards more consistent and proactive protections. Ofcom emphasises that while the guidance focuses on harms that disproportionately affect women and girls, many of the measures are expected to improve safety for users more broadly.