Age assurance, a generic term for technologies allowing the verification, estimation or deduction of the age of an Internet user, is propelled to the forefront of the global scene thanks to a on the cover on the use of social media by under-16s in Australia.
The law, which is expected to come into force in Australia in November 2025, will require social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to ensure they verify the age of users and prevent minors from accessing their services.
The legislation was passed before key details were worked out, such as the definition of “reasonable measures”.
Australia will test old age insurance technologies next year to help regulators (its Electronic Security Commissioner is the competent body) sets some of the key parameters. This trial will also likely be closely watched elsewhere, given widespread concerns about the impact of social media on children's well-being.
Other similar nationwide bans could follow, which would also force platforms to adopt old-age insurance technologies, preparing the sector for growth.
Companies offering services in this area include the American identity giant Entrust (which earlier this year, onfido acquired the British digital ID startup); Veteran of German startups IDnow; American company Jumiowhat makes it started as an online payment company before moving to digital identity services; Based in Estonia Check; And Yotia 10-year-old British player, to name a few.
Yoti confirmed to TechCrunch that it will participate in the Australian trial, saying it will look to test its facial age estimation technology, digital ID app, ID document and Liveness .
The term “liveability” refers to digital identity verification technology used to detect whether a person depicted on an identity document, for example, is the same person as the one sitting behind the computer trying to access a service, and generally relying on AI. analysis based on a video feed of the user (so looking at things like how light plays on their face when they move).
The three types of old age insurance
The Australian trial is overseen by a British non-profit organization, the Age Verification Certification Program (ACCS), which performs compliance testing and certification for age insurance technology providers.
“We are an independent third-party compliance assessment body that tests the operation of identity and age verification systems,” explains Tony Allen, CEO and founder of ACCS. “We perform identity verification, age verification, age estimation, testing and analysis of vendor systems around the world. This project was therefore entirely within our reach.
While the Australian trial is currently making headlines, it claims that ACCS is carrying out age assurance testing projects “all over the world” – including the US, Europe and the UK. Uni – predicting that technology will “definitely” come to a lot of things. no more internet soon.
According to Allen, age assurance breaks down into three different areas: age verification, age estimation, and age inference.
Age verification confirms the user's exact date of birth, for example by matching a person to a government-issued ID or obtaining this information through a person's bank or medical record .
Age estimation provides an estimate or range, while inference relies on other confirmed information – such as a person holding a bank account, credit card, mortgage or even a pilot's license – to demonstrate that she is over a certain age. (A minor certainly won't have a mortgage, for example.)
At its core, an age limit that requires users to self-report their date of birth (i.e. “self-declaration”) technically falls under age assurance. However, such a simple measure is unlikely to be sufficient for Australian law, as it is exceptionally easy for children to circumvent such mechanisms.
Stricter measures, increasingly targeted at things like behavioral triggers, could eventually become a compliance requirement in Australia and other countries where children can go online. The British regulator, Ofcom, for example, is push platforms for better age checks as it struggles to implement the Online Safety Act, while the European Commission uses the bloc's Digital Services Act to rely on major porn sites to adopt age verification measures to reinforce minor protection.
The precise methods in Australia are yet to be determined, with the social media giant Meta continues has lobby for checks to be sent to mobile app stores with the aim of avoiding having to implement the technology on its own platforms. Allen expects a mix of approaches.
“I would expect to see age verification, age estimation and age inference. I think we’ll see a mix of all of that,” he says.
Confidentiality in demand
Allen explains that privacy has become a selling point for new forms of age guarantees.
“Age verification has been around for years and years,” he suggests. “Online gambling has been around since gambling went online in the 1990s. So the process is nothing new: the novelty of recent years has been figuring out how to do it while preserving life private. So instead of taking a regular photo of your passport and attaching it to an email and sending it out into the ether hoping for the best, the technology is now much more designed around privacy and security .
Allen downplays privacy concerns over inappropriate data sharing, saying that “generally speaking” third-party age assurance providers will only provide a yes/no answer to an age verification question (e.g., “Is this person over 16?”), thereby minimizing the data they send back to the platform to reduce privacy risks.
Allen argues that broader concerns about the age guarantee a vector to enable massive surveillance of Internet users are poorly placed.
“These are people who just don’t understand how this technology works,” he says. “It doesn't create anything that you can monitor. None of the systems we test have this central database concept or this tracking concept, and the international standard specifically prohibits this. So there are a lot of myths about what this technology does and doesn't do.
Growing industry
Yoti refused to “question” the results of the trial in advance, or the “methods or thresholds” that Australian lawmakers might deem “proportionate” to set in this context. But the industry will look closely at the margin of error that will be allowed with techniques such as facial age estimation, where the user is asked to show their face to a camera.
Low-friction controls like this are likely to be attractive to social media companies – indeed, some platforms (like Instagram) have already done this. tested age checks based on selfies. It's much easier to convince camera-loving teens to take a selfie than to get them to find and download a digital ID, for example. But it's unclear whether lawmakers will allow them.
“We don't know yet if the regulator will not set a buffer, or a buffer of 1, 2 or 3 years for facial age estimation,” Yoti told us, arguing for greater wiggle room around the margin of error for facial age estimation. -age checks. “They might consider that if there are fewer alternatives to government-issued documents for 16-year-olds, with high levels of security, no margin is proportionate.”
With increasing attention from lawmakers, Allen expects more old-age insurance 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 will be all kinds,” he suggests. “We see new ideas. There is currently one asking if you can check age from your pulse… Which is interesting. So we'll see if that changes. There are others in the surrounding area as well. Hand movement and the geometry of your fingers is another one we've observed recently.
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