New internet safety legislation in the UK will require pornographic websites to verify the age of its visitors. The bill, which is part of the draught Online Safety Bill, intends to provide stronger protection for youngsters against explicit information. To guarantee that users are 18 or older, users may be asked to show proof of credit card ownership or validate their age through a third-party service. Failure to act could result in a fine of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover.
The Online Safety Bill, which is aimed at protecting users from hazardous content, is anticipated to be submitted into parliament in the coming months. Children’s safety organizations have long advocated for age verification on porn sites, citing concerns that kids have too easy access to publicly available content online.
Similar proposals were made in the past, but they were shelved in 2019.According to studies, half of 11 to 13-year-olds have seen pornography at some point in their lives. Children’s experts say it offers them inappropriate notions of sex and consent, placing them at risk of predators and maybe preventing them from reporting abuse.
“Parents deserve peace of mind that their children are protected online from seeing things no child should see,” Digital Economy Minister Chris Philp said when announcing the age verification plans. In addition to fining websites that do not follow the rules, the regulator Ofcom could block them from being accessible in the UK. If the owners of these websites do not cooperate with Ofcom, they may face criminal charges. Previously, the Online Safety Bill only applied to commercial porn sites that allowed user-generated content, but now all commercial porn sites will be affected.
The strengthening of the Online Harms Bill was welcomed by Andy Burrows of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), but he claimed it didn’t go far enough.
“It’s great that the government has responded to pleas to close one of the gaps in the Online Safety Bill so that children are protected from pornography wherever it’s housed,” he added.
“Most importantly, they’ve responded on our concerns by closing the ‘Only Fans loophole,’ which would have let some of the riskiest sites off the hook despite enabling children access to extremely harmful information.”
“However, the Act falls short of providing comprehensive protection for children against preventable abuse and dangerous content, and it requires major strengthening to match the government’s rhetoric and focus minds at the top of internet corporations on child safety.”
The Digital Economy Act of 2017 had proposals to require people to validate their age before accessing sexual content online, but the government never implemented them. In 2019, they were formally abandoned, with ministers promising that “alternative measures” will achieve the same aims. Last year, campaigners were surprised to learn that the first draught of the Online Safety Bill did not include these long-promised safeguards.
Companies will have to decide how best to comply with the new requirements, however Ofcom may suggest that particular age verification methods be used. The government, on the other hand, states that companies should not process or store data that is unrelated to determining someone’s age.
Despite the widespread usage of age verification technology in industries such as online gambling, privacy concerns remain. Blackmailers would be able to easily hack a database of pornography consumers, according to campaigners.
The restrictions will enrich age verification corporations while providing “no practical advantage for child safety, and tremendous harm to people’s privacy,” according to Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, which advocates to defend digital rights and freedoms. He told the BBC that “there is no proof that this approach will safeguard people from being tracked and profiled for their pornographic watching.”
“We must presume that the same basic blunders about privacy and security will be repeated.”
However, Iain Corby, executive director of the Age Verification Providers Association, noted that the companies he represents have devised a variety of methods for proving someone’s age online without revealing their identify to the websites they visit.
“Adults may be certain that their personal privacy will be safeguarded while their children are protected by employing independent, third-party organizations that have been audited and certified to comply with the highest standards of data protection and security.”
