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Regulators around the world are grappling with how best to keep kids away from online porn, and one of the more popular approaches is age verification. But existing age checks are easy to get around, especially for tech-savvy teens.
In the UK, communications regulator Ofcom this week laid out a few options for how to verify people’s ages on adult services—which may include scanning your face.
The UK's wide-ranging Online Safety Act became law in October, but it gives Ofcom ample time to implement its provisions; some of its guidance isn't expected until spring 2025. This week, however, it did tackle the part of the law covering "child safety, pornography and the protection of women and girls" by releasing a list of possible ways to verify age on porn sites.
Among the approaches it thinks "could be highly effective" are: sharing bank data to confirm someone is over 18; photo ID matching that compares the image on a government document to a selfie submitted to the site; tapping into services that mobile providers already use to verify age; credit card checks; and the use of digital wallets.
One other option: facial age estimation, in which "the features of a user’s face are analyzed to estimate their age."
The draft "suggests that a 'challenge age' could be set...where the technology estimates the users’ age to be under 25, for example, that user would undergo a second age-check via an alternative method," Ofcom says. It doesn't specify how exactly this would work.
"We do not have evidence to suggest that other methods of age estimation [besides facial age estimation] are currently capable of being highly effective, are sufficiently mature technologies, or are being deployed at scale," according to Ofcom, which pledges to "review this position over time as technologies evolve."
The agency says it "expects online pornography services to work with us" as it finalizes rules. Those that don't "will face enforcement action, including possible fines." Final guidance is expected in early 2025.
Ofcom states that the average age of a child when they first see online porn is 13 years old; 25% of children have come across it by the age of 11.