Do Son 
According to a report from Thomson Reuters, the European Commission has recently proposed prohibiting any child under 13 from using social media. Meanwhile, adolescents under 15 could use accounts only under parental supervision. The proposed measure belongs to the Kids Act, which would cover 450 million users across the EU’s 27 countries. This means users must verify their age before using social media.
The EU Plans an Open-Source Age-Verification Tool
The EU already requires social media to verify users’ age under the Digital Services Act now in force. This is chiefly to distinguish adults from minors. The Kids Act, however, is legislation aimed specifically at children and adolescents. It naturally covers more than social media. The emphasis is that website service providers must offer tiered usage policies according to age. Also, sites must verify users’ age.
The EU plans to develop an open-source age-verification tool for use across member states. The tool is led in development by the European Commission, while actual deployment is left to each member state to run. The EU establishes no central age database. It collects no user age or other identity information for verification.
Member states themselves designate the bodies to deploy and manage the age-verification program. This may be a digital-identity provider, a bank, or a post office. After deployment, other websites can read an age boolean value stored on the phone. That is, whether the user has or has not reached the legally required age. The platform then decides, based on the returned value and legal requirements, whether to provide the service to the user.
Aiming to Build a Universal Age-Verification Tool
Many countries are currently pushing age verification and tiered-access policies for internet services. However, the problem is that internet services lack a good method of age verification. In the UK, for instance, a user wishing to access adult websites must submit a selfie or driving license. This is plainly unacceptable to users. Therefore, they would rather use a VPN to reach adult sites across borders.
The EU is also mindful of this problem. To smoothly advance the relevant policies, the EU hopes to build a universal age-verification tool that other websites and services can call upon directly. This way, they need not separately collect user information to judge age. This also protects user privacy and spares users from submitting sensitive information that could leak.
Finally, the Kids Act is still at the proposal stage. EU member states and the European Parliament will subsequently vote on it. If it passes, this new law could be implemented before long. At that point, many kinds of internet services operating in the EU would have to verify users’ age.
Support Our Threat Intelligence
Find our tech and OS security coverage helpful? Support our work today and unlock a 100% ad-free reading experience!
Buy Me a Coffee
