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As Australia bans social media for under-16s, age verification technology is highlighted

Age verification, an umbrella term for the technology to verify, estimate, or identify an internet user’s age, is being thrust into the global spotlight due to a blanket ban on social media use by under-16s in Australia.

The law, which is expected to come into force in Australia in November 2025, will require social networks to take “reasonable steps” to ensure they verify the age of users and prevent children from accessing their services.

The law was passed before important details were defined – such as the definition of “reasonable steps.”

Australia will trial age verification technology next year to help regulators (its eSafety Commissioner is the relevant body) set some of the key parameters. This research is likely to be looked at elsewhere, given the widespread concern about the impact of social media on children’s well-being.

More similar nationwide bans could follow, which would also require arenas to adopt age-verification technology, setting the industry up for growth.

Companies providing services in this area include the likes of US identity giant Entrust (which earlier this year acquired UK ID digital startup Onfido); Veteran German startup IDnow; US company Jumio, which actually started as an online payment company before turning to digital identity services; Veriff based in Estonia; and Yoti, a 10-year-old UK player, to name a few.

Yoti has confirmed to TechCrunch that it will participate in the Australian study, saying it will want to test its facial age estimation technology, Digital ID app, ID document, and Liveness.

The term “liveness” refers to digital identity verification technology used to determine whether a person in an ID card photo, for example, is the same person sitting behind a computer trying to access a service, and often relies on AI-based analysis of the user’s video feed (so it looks for things like the light playing how on their faces as they move).

Three types of age verification

The Australian test is overseen by a UK non-profit organisation, the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS), which assesses compliance with the certification of providers of age verification technology.

“We are an independent, third-party agency that evaluates the effectiveness of ID and age verification systems,” explains CEO and founder of ACCS, Tony Allen. “We do identity verification, age verification, age verification, testing and analysis of merchant systems around the world. So this project is very important for our road. “

While the Australian case is grabbing headlines at the moment, he says ACCS is doing age verification projects “all over the world” – including in the US, Europe, and the UK – predicting that the technology is “definitely coming” to much of the internet soon.

For Per Allen, age verification is divided into three different areas: age verification, age estimation, and age interpretation.

Age verification verifies a user’s exact date of birth, such as matching a person to a government-issued ID or obtaining this information through a person’s bank or health record.

Age estimates provide an average or range, while assumptions rely on other verified information – such as someone holding a bank account, credit card, mortgage, or pilot’s license – to show they are older than a certain age. (A young child certainly won’t have a mortgage, for example.)

At its core, an age gate that asks users to reveal their date of birth (i.e., “self-identification”) technically falls under age verification. However, such an unwise measure is unlikely to be sufficient in Australian law as it is very easy for children to bypass these measures.

Increasingly stricter measures based on factors such as behavioral triggers could end up being a compliance requirement in Australia and other places where children may be online. The UK regulator, Ofcom, for example, is pushing for better age verification platforms as it works to implement the Internet Safety Act, while the European Commission is using the bloc’s Digital Services Act to rely on major porn sites to take age-verification measures for promotion. less protection.

The exact steps in Australia are yet to be determined, as social media giant Meta continues to push for checks to be baked into mobile app stores in an effort to avoid using the technology on its platforms. Allen expects a combination of methods.

“I would expect to see age verification, age estimation, and age interpretation. I think we will see a mix of all of these,” he said.

Privacy wanted

Allen explains that privacy has become a selling point for new forms of age verification.

“Age verification has been around for years and years and years,” he suggests. “The Internet has been around since online gambling in the 1990s. So this process is nothing new – what’s new in the last few years has been figuring out how to do it in a way that preserves privacy. So instead of taking a standard photo of your passport and attaching it to an email and sending it out into the ether and hoping for the best, technology is now designed more with privacy and security in mind. “

Allen downplays privacy concerns about improper data sharing, saying that “typically” third-party age verification providers will only provide a yes/no answer to an age verification question (eg, “Is this person over 16?”), thereby reducing data. which they put back into place to reduce privacy risks.

Allen says the broader concern about age verification as a vector to enable mass surveillance of web users is misplaced.

“Those are people who just don’t understand how this technology works,” he said. “There is nothing you can’t control. None of the systems we tested have that central database concept or tracking concept, and the international standard specifically forbids that possibility. So there are a lot of myths out there about what these technologies do and don’t do. “

A growing industry

Yoti refused to “second-guess” the outcome of the case in advance, or “the means or any restrictions” Australian lawmakers might consider “reasonable” to impose in this context. But the industry will be looking closely at how much margin of error will be allowed for techniques such as facial age estimation, where the user is asked to show their face to the camera.

A strict check like this is likely to be attractive to social media companies – indeed, some platforms (like Instagram) already have selfie-based age checks. It’s much easier to convince camera-loving teenagers to take a selfie than to get them to get and upload a digital ID, for example. But it is unclear whether lawmakers will allow them.

“We don’t know yet if the regulator will put a buffer, or a 1-, 2- or 3-year buffer for facial age estimation,” Yoti told us, making the case for more room for facial error. -age test. “They may think that if there are several other government-issued licenses issued to 16-year-olds, with higher security levels, there is not equal protection.”

With increased attention from lawmakers, Allen expects more age-validation technologies and companies to emerge in the coming years.

“There is an open call for participation [in the Australian age assurance trial] so … I think there’s going to be all kinds of things coming out,” he suggests. “We see new ideas. There’s a current issue about whether you can do age verification with your heartbeat… Interesting. So we’ll see if that develops. There are others nearby, too. The movement of your hands and the geometry of your fingers is another thing we’ve been seeing lately.”


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