Ofcom has set a new and ambitious standard for women and girls’ online safety in the UK with proposed measures that set out practical steps for online services – including dating apps, social media, gaming, pornography sites and search services – to tackle online harm against women and girls.

The guidance comes as part of the Online Safety Act 2023, which places requirements on online service providers to address illegal gender-based harms, protect children from misogyny and shield them from pornographic content.

When passing the act, parliament included a requirement for Ofcom to produce additional guidance on women and girls’ safety online, which is what it has published today (25 February 2025).

The guidance focuses on four main issues:

• Online misogyny – content that actively encourages or cements misogynistic ideas or behaviours, including through the normalisation of sexual violence.
• Pile-ons and online harassment – when a woman or groups of women are targeted with abuse and threats of violence. Women in public life, including journalists and politicians, are often affected.
• Online domestic abuse – the use of technology for coercive and controlling behaviour within an intimate relationship.
• Intimate image abuse – the non-consensual sharing of intimate images – including those created with AI as well as cyberflashing – and sending explicit images to someone without their consent.

To illustrate the specific changes that providers can make to improve women and girls’ safety, Ofcom has outlined practical examples of good industry practice, such as:

• ‘Abusability’ testing to identify how a service or feature could be exploited by a malicious user.
• Technology to prevent intimate image abuse, such as identifying and removing non-consensual images based on databases.
• User prompts asking them to reconsider before posting harmful material – including detected misogyny, nudity or content depicting illegal gendered abuse and violence.
• Easier account controls, such as bundling default settings to make it easier for women experiencing pile-ons to protect their accounts.
• Visibility settings, allowing users to delete or change the visibility of their content, including material they uploaded in the past.
• Strengthening account security, for example using more authentication steps, making it harder for perpetrators to monitor accounts without the owner’s consent.
• Removing geolocation by default, because this information leaking can lead to serious harms, stalking or threats to life.
• Training moderation teams to deal with online domestic abuse.
• Reporting tools that are accessible and support users who experience harm.
• User surveys to better understand people’s preferences and experiences of risk, and how best to support them.
• More transparency, including publishing information about the prevalence of different forms of harms, user reporting and outcomes.

To develop the guidance, Ofcom worked closely with organisations and charities on the front line of supporting women and girls, survivors and victims themselves.

Evidence shows that women and girls experience unique and serious risks online. They’re more at risk of image-based sexual abuse, are disproportionately targeted by misogynistic pile-ons and harassment and are the main survivors and victims of online domestic abuse. Research also shows that those with multiple protected characteristics, such as LGBTQ+ communities and women from ethnic minority backgrounds, face additional harms.

Ofcom’s research found that women are significantly less likely than men to believe that the benefits of being online outweigh the risks or to say that they can share their opinions and have a voice online.

We know that online spaces – from social media to online forums to pornography sites – are used to control, exploit, monitor, silence, humiliate, abuse and threaten women and girls because of their gender, but Ofcom’s guidance hopes to make the online world a safer place for women and girls.

Ofcom is now inviting feedback on the draft guidance, as well as further evidence on any additional measures that could be included to address harms that disproportionately affect women and girls. Responses must be submitted by 23 May 2025. Once all responses have been examined, the final guidance will be published later this year with a view to coming into full effect by early 2026.

Images: Getty; Ofcom