UK government faces action over lack of age checks on adult sites 

  • Lawyers have begun judicial review proceedings against the government over allegations it failed to stop children in the UK watching online pornography. 
  • Age verification for legal pornography sites was introduced under part 3 of the Digital Economy Act in 2017 but the government never enforced it. 
  • Ministers have said the planned Online Harms Bill will instead protect children by placing a burden on internet providers to protect users from “harms” including viewing pornography while underage. 
  • But critics point out that this bill is currently only at White Paper stage with no current date to bring it before parliament. 
  • Paul Conrathe, solicitor with Sinclairs law, is bringing the legal action on the basis that children are being harmed currently by the lack of age verification, in direct breach of the government’s legal duty to protect them.
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Twitter tells users to be nice and think twice before replying 

  • Twitter will now prompt users to review and revise “potentially harmful or offensive” replies.
  • The social media platform, which has often faced criticism over abusive user behaviour, tested the feature last year. 
  • Twitter said the tests showed that the prompts reduced offensive replies. 
  • On Wednesday, the company said it would roll the prompts out to English language accounts using Twitter on Apple and Android.
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    Sunderland man found with vile Child abuse material of children as young as one will be sentenced by a Crown Court Judge

    • A man from Southwick, Sunderland, was caught with a large amount of child sex abuse material when officers from Northumbria Police’s specialist Paedophile Online Investigations Team raided his property. 
    • Forensic searches of his digital devices revealed 121 images, including 32 at the highest level category A, magistrates in South Tyneside heard. 
    • There were also 49 at category B and 40 at category C, Prosecutor John Graham revealed.
    • The offender has pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of a child, between July 1, 2006, and April 8 of this year. 
    • Magistrates told him his crimes were so serious their sentencing powers were insufficient, and he must be dealt with at crown court. 
    • He will be sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court on Friday, May 28.
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      Millions at security risk from old routers, Which? warns 

      • Millions of people could be using outdated routers that put them at risk of being hacked, Which? has warned. 
      • The consumer watchdog examined 13 models provided to customers by internet-service companies such as EE, Sky and Virgin Media and found more than two-thirds had flaws. 
      • It estimated about six million people could have a device not updated since 2018 or earlier.
      • So, in some cases, they would not have received crucial security updates.
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