Online safety: our illegal content risk assessment
HUK-P018 · Version 1.0 · last updated 28 September 2026 · reviewed every 12 months
Assessment dated 28 September 2026. Next review by 28 September 2027, or sooner if the service changes. Our terms of use say we keep a written assessment of the risk of illegal content on this site. This is it. The law asks us to keep a record; nothing obliges us to publish it, and we publish it because a promise nobody can check is not worth much.
1. Who is responsible
The director of HIRINGUK LTD is accountable for our online safety duties, for this assessment and for acting on reports. While the company is run by one person, that is also the person who reads every report. We say so plainly rather than describe a team we do not have.
2. What users can do on this site, and so where the risk can come from
| What a user can publish or send | Who sees it | What stands in the way |
|---|---|---|
| Job adverts written by employers and recruiters, with an optional logo | Anybody | Automatic screening of the wording before it goes live, a pay figure required, a minimum wage check, logos held until approved, and reporting on every advert |
| Anonymous availability cards written by candidates (no name, no contact details) | Anybody | Nothing is shown until we approve it, and a changed card goes back to unapproved |
| Reviews of our own service | Anybody | Written only from a one time link sent after a real paid order; we can hide one and we record why |
| Applications and CVs | Only the one employer applied to | Private, not searchable, never published |
What the site does not have, and each one removes a whole family of risk: no messaging between users, no public comments, no forums or groups, no live video or streaming, no user search of candidates, no photos of people, and no service aimed at children. The minimum age is 16.
Some of what employers publish is paid advertising, which the Act treats differently from other user content. We do not rely on that distinction. Every advert, paid or free, goes through the same screening and can be reported the same way.
3. The 17 kinds of priority illegal content, one by one
Ofcom asks every service to consider these 17 kinds. Rated for this site as it is today: negligible (no realistic route on this service), low, medium or high.
| Kind of illegal content | Risk here | Why, and what we do |
|---|---|---|
| Fraud and financial offences (fake jobs, fees charged to jobseekers, identity and bank detail harvesting, "reshipping" and money mule jobs) | Medium: our main risk | Job scams are the most common illegal content on job boards. Screening holds adverts that ask for money, bank details or documents before an offer, and adverts with pay that is implausible for the work. A report of a fee, scam or exploitation takes the advert down automatically, before anybody reads it. Candidates are warned what a scam looks like on staying safe. |
| Human trafficking | Medium | Recruitment is the first step of labour trafficking. Tied accommodation, transport deductions, debt and documents held are screened for, and a report takes the advert down at once. Details in our modern slavery statement. |
| Unlawful immigration (facilitating illegal working, visa and sponsorship scams) | Medium | Adverts promising a visa or sponsorship for a fee are refused; candidates are shown how to check the public register of licensed sponsors. "Cash in hand" is screened for. Right to work checks stay the employer's legal duty, and our employer terms say so. |
| Sexual exploitation of adults (sex work presented as "hostess", "massage" or "modelling" jobs) | Low | Wording screened, adverts must name a real employer, and obscene content is an immediate take down on report. |
| Proceeds of crime (money laundering disguised as "payment processing" jobs) | Low | Treated as fraud: the same screening and the same automatic removal on report. |
| Hate | Low | Only adverts and approved cards are visible, with no comments. Discriminatory wording is screened for under the Equality Act as well; hate is an immediate take down on report. |
| Harassment, stalking, threats and abuse | Low | No messaging between users. The realistic route is an employer misusing a candidate's contact details from an application; that breaks our terms and closes the account, and we report it where it is a crime. |
| Controlling or coercive behaviour | Low | Most likely inside exploitative work itself, covered under trafficking above. |
| Child sexual exploitation and abuse, including grooming | Low | No user images apart from moderated logos, no messaging, no service for children, and nothing that lets an adult find or contact a young person. 16 and 17 year olds can apply for jobs, so the risk is not zero: an employer receives an applicant's contact details. Any concern goes straight to the police and the account is closed. |
| Intimate image abuse | Negligible | Users cannot publish photos. Logos are approved before they appear. |
| Extreme pornography | Negligible | As above. |
| Terrorism | Negligible | No feed, comments or media sharing: nothing to spread material through. Reportable as illegal content if it ever appeared. |
| Drugs and psychoactive substances | Negligible | Only relevant as a disguised "courier" advert, which the fraud screening and reporting already cover. |
| Firearms, knives and other weapons | Negligible | As above. |
| Encouraging or assisting suicide or self harm | Negligible | No route for one user to address another. |
| Foreign interference | Negligible | No political or news content and no feed. |
| Animal cruelty | Negligible | No user images or video. |
Overall: the service carries a medium risk of fraud, human trafficking and illegal working, and low or negligible risk of everything else. The measures above are aimed at those three.
4. Reporting, removal and complaints
- Anybody can report an advert, signed in or not, anonymously if they prefer, from a link on every advert.
- Some reports remove the advert automatically the moment they arrive: money asked of a jobseeker, a scam, exploitation, illegal content, and hate, harassment or obscenity. The advertiser can ask for it to be looked at again.
- Every other report is read the same working day, and illegal content is removed as soon as we are aware of it.
- We tell the person who reported what we did, if they gave us a way to reply.
- If you think we got a decision wrong, about your advert or about your report, tell us and we look at it again from the start and reply in writing with our reasons. You can also use our complaints procedure.
- We work with the authorities. Suspected fraud goes to Action Fraud, suspected exploitation to the Modern Slavery Helpline, the Fair Work Agency or the police, and we keep what we hold for them.
The numbers behind all of this, adverts refused, reports received, adverts taken down, are published live in our transparency report.
5. When this assessment is done again
Every twelve months, and before any change that alters the risk, including: messaging between users, a public comment or review feature open to anybody, candidates publishing photos, a Telegram or WhatsApp channel of our own, or supplying workers ourselves through our agency. A change like that is assessed before it goes live, not after.
Version history
We keep the history so that if you relied on an earlier version, you can see exactly what changed and when. Ask at hello@hiringuk.co.uk for a copy of any earlier version.
| Version | Date | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 28 September 2026 | First written down and published. The terms of use had promised a written assessment since August and none existed. Rates the 17 kinds of priority illegal content for this site one by one; fraud, human trafficking and illegal working come out as the medium risks. Writing it found three gaps in the advert screening (visa and sponsorship sold to the worker, money mule and reshipping jobs, sex work presented as a job), which were added the same day. |