UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has laid out how porn sites could verify users’ ages under the newly passed Online Safety Act. Although the law gives sites the choice of how they keep out underage users, the regulator is publishing a list of measures they’ll be able to use to comply. These include having a bank or mobile network confirm that a user is at least 18 years old (with that user’s consent) or asking a user to supply valid details for a credit card that’s only available to people who are 18 and older. The regulator is consulting on these guidelines starting today and hopes to finalize its official guidance in roughly a year’s time.
The measures have the potential to be contentious and come a little over four years after the UK government scrapped its last attempt to mandate age verification for pornography. Critics raised numerous privacy and technical concerns with the previous approach, and the plans were eventually shelved with the hope that the Online Safety Act (then emerging as the Online Harms White Paper) would offer a better way forward. Now we’re going to see if that’s true, or if the British government was just kicking the can down the road.
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Ofcom lists six age verification methods in today’s draft guidelines. As well as turning to banks, mobile networks, and credit cards, other suggested measures include asking users to upload photo ID like a driver’s license or passport, or for sites to use “facial age estimation” technology to analyze a person’s face to determine that they’ve turned 18. Simply asking a site visitor to declare that they’re an adult won’t be considered strict enough.
Once the duties come into force, pornography sites will be able to choose from Ofcom’s approaches or implement their own age verification measures so long as they’re deemed to hit the “highly effective” bar demanded by the Online Safety Act. The regulator will work with larger sites directly and keep tabs on smaller sites by listening to complaints, monitoring media coverage, and working with frontline services. Noncompliance with the Online Safety Act can be punished with fines of up to £18 million (around $22.7 million) or 10 percent of global revenue (whichever is higher).
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“It is very concerning that Ofcom is solely relying upon data protection laws and the ICO to ensure that privacy will be protected,” ORG program manager Abigail Burke said in a statement. “The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which is progressing through parliament, will seriously weaken our current data protection laws, which are in any case insufficient for a scheme this intrusive.”
“Age verification technologies for pornography risk sensitive personal data being breached, collected, shared, or sold. The potential consequences of data being leaked are catastrophic and could include blackmail, fraud, relationship damage, and the outing of people’s sexual preferences in very vulnerable circumstances,” Burke said, and called for Ofcom to set out clearer standards for protecting user data.
There’s also the risk that any age verification implemented will end up being bypassed by anyone with access to a VPN.
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Source: The UK tries, once again, to age-gate pornography – The Verge
1. Age verification doesn’t work
2. Age verification doesn’t work
3. Age verification doesn’t work
4. Really, having to register as a porn watcher and then have your name in a leaky database?!
Robin Edgar
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