Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will ask the Information Commissioner's Office to investigate instances of pornographic websites using children's browsing history data to promote pornographic content to those users.

Providers of online services which are likely to be accessed by children are required by UK data protection legislation to ensure that children’s data is processed fairly, lawfully and transparently. They should not be sharing data with third parties unless there are compelling reasons to do so, taking account of the best interests of the child.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a code of practice on Age Appropriate Design, which offers guidance for organisations on complying with the legislation, including the privacy standards that should be adopted where they are offering online services to children. The code can be viewed on the ICO’s website at:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/key-data-protection-themes/age-appropriate-design-a-code-of-practice-for-online-services/

Online services that do not comply with the legislation, should be reported to the ICO which may, in turn, consider enforcement action.