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The anti-slavery watchdog has called for a complete overhaul of websites advertising sexual services after an investigation revealed they can act as “accelerators” of exploitation for sex workers using them.
While working online can provide enhanced protections for some, a new report from the independent anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, investigated the experiences of women who said they were exploited on the adult services sites, which typically allow users to browse through images and videos of women selling sex in their local area.
She reviewed data from 12 websites, interviewed 12 survivors and identified gaps in current legislation for women who operate online doing webcam work, and those who advertise sexual services online and then arrange to meet buyers of the services offline.
The report, published on Thursday and titled Behind the Profile: Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Through Adult Services Websites, highlights weak safeguarding and calls for stronger controls on these sites to prevent exploitation,
It also urges an overhaul of the fragmented and ambiguous regulatory framework, which has not kept pace with changes to the sites, and more support for survivors of this form of exploitation.
Before such websites existed, sex workers often advertised their services by placing business cards in phone boxes. Lyons said: “The era of adverts in phone boxes is behind us and has been replaced by a vast digital ecosystem that operates in public sight.”
Using specialised technology known as the sexual trafficking identification matrix, the research identified that the 12 sites had 63,000 listings during a few days last month and over the course of January attracted 41.7m visits.
Of the sex worker advertisements from the 12 sites analysed, 59% had three or more indicators of exploitation or trafficking, and 39% had four or more indicators.
Indicators include the same phone number appearing across multiple ads, references to drug use, a menu-based list of a broad range of sexual services, young-age claims, and phrases like “new to the area”.
The ads came from across the UK, although they were most heavily concentrated in London, according to a heatmap based on the research.
The findings are published at a time when recorded instances of sexual exploitation of women and girls are increasing.
According to the national referral mechanism for suspected victims of exploitation and trafficking, there was an 86% increase in these referrals for women between 2020 and 2025 – from 1,114 to 2,076 a year.
For girls over the same period, the increase was 61% – from 504 to 811. These figures do not represent the full extent of exploitation, however.
Some of those who appear on adult services websites have been trafficked and are completely under the control of a pimp or gang who put together their online profile, arrange bookings with buyers of sex, and pocket all the money.
While some women using the sites are working consensually, others begin by being in control of what they are doing but become more exploited over time.
According to the report, one of the sites offers free premium online accounts for those with academic email addresses ending in .edu. Working on the sites is marketed as a way to pay off student debt. One woman said this kind of targeting is evidence of the “gentrification of sexual exploitation”.
One interviewee said: “How do you go behind a webcam to make sure a woman isn’t being coerced?”
Another explained how being exploited on a webcam acted as a gateway that desensitised her and made her vulnerable to later trafficking.
A third said that sex buyers compared her with other women and weaponised the platforms’ structure to coerce her into acts that caused suffocation risk, danger of spinal damage and serious injury. She said she found herself in situations on multiple occasions where “she feared she would die”.
Women said it was hard to find the right sort of help and support to help them exit adult services websites and that peer support groups were often the most useful resource.
One woman said she felt too ashamed to seek help because she feared she would be told it was her own fault for getting involved with one of the sites. Another talked about violence from a man she was working with on a webcam.
“I remember one night he was beating me up on camera … I didn’t scream because I didn’t want to wake my children up.”
The report concludes that the sites facilitate gradual entrapment, erode boundaries and obscure exploitation beneath the appearance of autonomy.
Lyons said: “If we are to confront this reality, our regulatory frameworks, enforcement tools and support systems must all evolve together accordingly.”
