The popular online image sharing website Imgur.com, which was first founded in 2009 and has been widely used to host viral images, short videos and memes that can be linked to from other sites, appears as if it may have responded to a recent Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigation by blocking UK IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.
People on UK internet connections who try to visit the website, or who wish to view imgur.com hosted images via other websites (it’s common practice to upload and share images in this way), are instead being shown a generic error message: “Content not available in your region“. This typically indicates that the website itself has implemented a geo-block against the country.
NOTE: Geographic access restrictions can easily be circumvented via a variety of methods.
The strong suspicion being expressed online is that this could be a response to the new Online Safety Act (OSA) and its requirements for websites to implement “effective age checks“ on visitors (here). The measure is designed to prevent children from encountering online porn and protect them from other harmful content, but it’s also something that has not been universally popular (here).
One of the issues is that Ofcom and the government have been trying to apply this in an extraterritorial fashion to websites based and hosted in other countries. Sites that don’t comply could potentially face fines or be blocked by UK internet providers (broadband and mobile). Suffice to say that some sites have been opting to simply block UK visitors instead of going through the complex and costly hassle of adopting another country’s rules.
However, it now seems more likely that Imgur’s decision is a direct reaction to a recent investigation by the ICO, which we’ll come back to in a moment.
An Ofcom spokesperson told ISPreview:
“Imgur’s decision to restrict access in the UK is a commercial decision taken by the company and not a result of any action taken by Ofcom. It has not stated the reasons for its decision. Other services run by MediaLab remain available in the UK – such as Kik messenger, which has implemented age assurance to comply with the Online Safety Act.”
So far as we can tell, imgur.com does not appear to have issued any prior notice of their intent to adopt such a measure, which will be a breaking change for a lot of online UK content that relied on the image sharing service. However, it may not have helped when, during October last year, imgur.com decided to loosen its restrictions on memes and photos involving adult humour (PC Mag), although they don’t allow nudity / porn.
We should point out that imgur.com has in the past been the subject of several blocks imposed by broadband ISPs too (e.g. here and here), albeit usually by accident due to faulty content filtering. But crucially Imgur.com is currently being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for its approach to assessing the age of child users in the UK (here).
The ICO previously said their investigations into Imgur were “considering how the platforms use UK children’s personal information and their use of age assurance measures … Age assurance plays an important role in keeping children, and their personal information, safe online. There are tools or approaches that can help estimate or verify a child’s age, which then allow services to be tailored to their needs or access to be restricted“.
However, the ICO’s investigation is being carried out under data protection law, not the OSA. Admittedly there is crossover between the two regimes when it comes to age assurance (i.e. providers need to comply with both regimes and the two regulators have been co-ordinating on that), but stritcly speaking the ICO’s investigation has nothing to do with the OSA itself.
UPDATE 11:48am
We’ve added a comment from Ofcom above and added some detail on the ICO’s investigation into imgur.com.
UPDATE 12:04pm
The ICO has also issued an update on the aforementioned investigation today (here), which adds some key context. The ICO previously said they had been working closely with Ofcom on this, which has responsibility for enforcing the Online Safety Act, to ensure their efforts are co-ordinated.
Tim Capel, ICO Interim Executive Director – Regulatory Supervision, said:
“We reached our provisional findings on this investigation, and we issued a notice of intent to impose a monetary penalty on MediaLab on 10 September 2025.
Our findings are provisional and the ICO will carefully consider any representations from MediaLab before taking a final decision whether to issue a monetary penalty.
We have been clear that exiting the UK does not allow an organisation to avoid responsibility for any prior infringement of data protection law, and our investigation remains ongoing.
This update has been provided to give clarity on our investigation, and we will not be providing any further detail at this time.
Safeguarding children’s personal information is a key priority for the ICO and our Children’s code strategy outlines our key interventions in this area. Keeping children safe online is the responsibility of the companies offering online services to them and we will continue to hold them to account.”
UPDATE 1:48pm
Imgur.com has updated their help site to include the following statement (this part is still viewable from the UK).
Imgur access in the United Kingdom
From September 30, 2025, access to Imgur from the United Kingdom is no longer available. UK users will not be able to log in, view content, or upload images. Imgur content embedded on third-party sites will not display for UK users.
You can exercise your data protection rights without logging in (for example, to request a copy of your data or deletion) using our Help Center request form.
We may request information to verify your identity and will respond within the time limits set by UK data protection law.
We may continue to process limited personal data where necessary and lawful, for example, to comply with legal obligations and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. Information about how long we keep data and how we process it is available in our Privacy Policy.
If you have questions, please contact us via our Support request form.
UPDATE 4:05pm
The key part of the ICO’s investigation seemed to have focused on how Imgur failed to ask visitors to declare their age when setting up an account. We’ve clarified above that this investigation took place under data protection law and not the OSA.
4chan had the correct response to the UK state
There’s no money, taxes are at record levels and they are trying to extort money out of foreign companies
Fair enough Imgur. The country will have to reap what we sow.
This makes VPN use compulsory to take part in many online discussions, well done everybody
VPNs are a work around until they are outlawed and blocked as well! Not too long now and we will be forced to log into our ISP using our digital ID so we can be policed and tracked and censored. What a country the UK is becoming.
VPNs are still accessible to people in countries furthest down this road like Russia and China, so the UK government will have a very difficult time blocking them in practice. It does kinda depend on there being some free countries left to host the servers though which is not a given anymore. Or they could take a cue from Afghanistan and simply cut the fibre optic cables, which, to be fair, would be pretty effective.
using a VPN is good, but when this website comes up as
“Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access this resource.”
When i’m doing so, means i have to turn it off all the time.
Lol naive of you to think Russia and China are further down the road when more people are being arrested in the UK for online posts and general speech issues. I’ve seen 2 videos of people being arrested simply for using the word “muppet”
A VPN is great, now I’ve saved on all these streaming services so that was a good effect of the new laws. Although this website doesn’t allow access via a VPN. I had to add it to Surfshark bypass list. Only other website I’ve encountered that blocks outside UK traffic is Money Saving Expert.
Reminder that the Online Safety Act 2023 was the product of Conservative Governments who proposed and passed the legislation – and seemingly set rules in legislation around what the OSA needs to deliver.
True, but the legislation was backed the then opposition Labour Party so both parties were fully signed up to this.
And Labour wanted it too, so not sure what your point is. I suppose just making sure people aren’t sullying the Labour name. I hope they’re voted out into oblivion come the next election. Worst government I’ve ever seen.
It’s not a left vs right issue, it’s an authoritarian vs liberal one. And both major parties in the UK are authoritarian. We’ve had creeping online censorship since Blair with very little pushback, occasionally the Lib Dems have said something but they’ve been rather meek too.
They are all the same party supporting the same exact agenda 2030: censorship, open borders, net zero, high taxes, high crime, big government, stealing land
And now that a different party is ahead in the polls they are proceeding with the dehumanization, the same kind of rhetoric that radicalized the extremist base and ended Charlie Kirk’s life. Absolutely appalling that even the Daily Mail does not need to exaggerate on their headlines on how low labour has sunk
It’s definitely the UK as using a VPN starts showing the images.
Still, if they’re going to block us, I wish they’d at least use a smaller image or match the resolution of the original, because it’s annoying on one site I frequent where people use relatively small images in their signature and now there’s a large image replacing it.
With any luck more will follow and the government will have no choice but to roll this idiocy back.
“Imgur’s decision to restrict access in the UK is a commercial decision taken by the company and not a result of any action taken by Ofcom.”
What a cop out response. Of course it’s because of action taken by Ofcom. Even if they wanted to Imgur can’t verify age every single time an embedded image is loaded on a third-party website or chat app. It’s not blocked for commercial reasons it’s blocked because of OSA and Ofcom’s enforcement of it. They need to accept some responsbility for what are they doing and tell us how they will address it going forward.
Enforcement fines = money for them, assuming the companies fall for this racketeering. The government isn’t going to address it, this is what they want. Next will probably come appeals for site blocks, maybe some kind of licencing for VOD content, all of which companies would need to pay for. It’s all an attempt to squeeze companies for whatever money they can get.
The facts say otherwise.
Still fail to see how the UK can enforce fines on any website that is hosted in a foreign country and has no assets in the UK without the cooperation of that countries government, which in the case of the USA is highly unlikely. They might be able to block said website or prevent UK advertisers using them or prevent them collecting money from UK users, but that’s about it.
They will keep it on record and if any management ever flys to the UK then they will probably be detained on site.
The owners have a UK-based operation.
Good on Imgur. Can’t say I blame them. Another site to add to my proxy pac file to send connections va non-uk VPN.
Absolutely ridiculous. Always the same – “protecting children” is an excuse for censorship. How about allowing adults to use the internet in the manner its intended? Sorry Herr Starmer, I’m not 6 and you’re not my mum, so get bent.
And then people wonder why the far right wins the election.
Indeed. At this point it feels like Keir Starmer is deliberately trying to lose the election. The only hope now is if his party replace him with someone sane ASAP.
@Blue Shirt Guy:
If Starmer is replaced by the party, it will be with someone from the Far-Left, so things will only get worse.
reminder this site also blocks VPN users (well some VPNs, some are not blocked)
this was never about “won’t someone think of the children”, it was always about the government having control over the internet. Although the fact that ICO/OFCOM think they can control what a non-UK entity does with threats of fines is laughable. Hey OFCOM hows those fines going against 4chan/Kiwi etc ? no? didn’t think so lol
Try reading the article.
I like the dont give a monkey about UK they adopted, not even a web page developed, just raw error code.
It’s also the wrong error code, it should be a 451.
Word salad from the totalitarian ICO. “Safeguarding children’s personal information is a key priority for the ICO and our Children’s code strategy outlines our key interventions in this area.” What utter tosh.
Welcome to Blair and Brown’s Britain – this is the end of a 30 year project, and it’ll only get worse.
We had councils spying on people during lockdown, the police with drones following people walking their dog in the middle of nowhere. This is just the next stage
Remember the insults agains the people questioning compulsory lockdown for healthy 20 year olds? And the insults thrown at them?
IIRC, there was a history of controversy regarding this site.
Only by people with ulterior motives to censor the internet. If you were going to try and go after a bad apple on the internet Imger would be near the bottom of the list.
@Blue Shirt Guy:
That is not true.
I wonder: is there any way that pressure can be placed on both parties to force them to come to an arrangement, rather than let the little man in the middle become the scapegoat?
If the company has a problem with performing basic checks, then perhaps it should be blocked anyway.
such an annoying situation, kinda fed up of all the govenment interfearing crap tbh, we’ve had the internet for so many years now, maybe they should be educating people on its use rather than limiting everything. Just a typical lazy gov.