From 25 July 2025, section 12 of the Online Safety Act required Fapello to
implement age verification and/or age estimation that is highly effective at determining whether a user is a child, in order to prevent children from encountering pornographic content on its service.
Ofcom has determined that
Fapello has failed to comply with this requirement. During the period from 25 July 2025 to 26 November 2025 fapello.com did not implement age assurance measures. On 27 November 2025, Fapello implemented age assurance measures on fapello.com. On 13
January 2026, Fapello removed these age assurance methods and implemented a block to prevent UK users accessing the service and informed us of this change.
On 12 December 2025, Ofcom issued a statutory information request to
Fapello requiring Fapello to provide information regarding its qualifying worldwide revenue (‘QWR’) and a complete list of all services operated by Fapello. To date, Ofcom has not received a substantive response to the Notice.
As
a result of the above breaches, Ofcom is imposing the following:
• A single penalty of £30,000
• A requirement for Fapello to comply by taking immediate steps to provide the full legal name(s) of the entity and/or individual(s) with control.
• In the event of continuing non-compliance, Ofcom will impose a daily penalty at a rate of £200 per day starting from 9 July 2026 for a maximum of 60 days
i) there is ‘no legal entity, registered company or corporate structure’ behind fapello.com, and that it is operated by the non-UK based
author of the email;
ii) the revenue generated from fapello.com is ‘incidental’ as a small-scale operation, and Fapello is therefore unable to provide QWR; and
iii) Fapello had implemented a full geo-block to prevent UK users accessing
fapello.com, and therefore Fapello asserted that the site no longer has links to the UK
