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Age-assistance, an umbrella term that refers to techniques for verifying, estimating or inferring an internet user’s age, is thrust into the global spotlight thanks to a sweeping ban on social media use for under-16s in Australia.
The law, which is expected to come into effect in Australia in November 2025, will require social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to ensure the age of users is verified and prevent minors from accessing their services.
The legislation was passed before key details – such as the definition of “reasonable steps” – were determined.
Australia will trial age assurance technologies next year to help regulators Electronic Safety Commissioner is the relevant body) Set some basic parameters. This trial is likely to be closely watched elsewhere as well, given widespread concerns about the impact of social media on children’s health.
This could be followed by other similar bans across the country, which will also require platforms to adopt age assurance technologies, setting the sector up for growth.
Companies providing services in this space include the likes of US identity giant Entrust (which earlier this year acquired UK digital identity startup Onfido); German startup IDnow; US company Jumio, which actually started out as an online payments company before shifting to digital identity services; Estonia-based Verive; and Uti, a 10-year-old British player, to name a few.
Yoti confirmed to TechCrunch that it would participate in the Australian trial, saying it would seek to test facial age estimation technology, a digital ID app, an identity document, and Liveness.
“Liveness” refers to digital identity verification technology that is used to detect whether the person in the photo on an identity document, for example, is the same person sitting behind a computer trying to access a service, typically based on artificial intelligence. Analysis based on a video feed of the user (thus looking at things like how the light plays on their face as they move).
The three types of age insurance
The Australian trial is being overseen by a non-profit organization in the United Kingdom Age verification certificate system (ACCS), which performs compliance testing and certification of age assurance technology providers.
“We are an independent, third-party conformity assessment body that tests how well identity and age verification systems work,” explains Tony Allen, CEO and founder of ACCS. “We do identity verification, age verification, age estimation, testing and analysis of vendor systems all over the world. So this project was very much right up our street.
While the Australian trial is making headlines at the moment, he says ACCS is implementing age assurance testing projects “all over the world” – including in the US, Europe and the UK – anticipating the technology will “certainly come to fruition” for many more. More internet coming soon.
According to Allen, age assurance is divided into three different areas: age verification, age estimation, and age inference.
Age verification confirms 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.
An age estimate provides an estimate or range, while an inference relies on other confirmatory information — such as a person with a bank account, credit card, mortgage, or even a pilot’s license — to prove that he or she is older than a certain age. (A minor would certainly not get a mortgage, for example.)
At its simplest, an age portal that asks users to declare their date of birth (i.e. “self-declaration”) technically falls under an age guarantee. However, such an unsophisticated measure is unlikely to be sufficient for Australian law because it is very easy for children to circumvent such mechanisms.
More aggressive and increasingly targeted measures based on things like behavioral triggers may eventually become a requirement of compliance in both Australia and other places where children may come online. For example, the UK regulator, Ofcom, is pushing platforms for better age checks, working to implement an online safety law, while the European Commission is using the bloc’s Digital Services Act to rely on major porn sites to adopt verification measures. Age to enhance slight protection.
The exact methods have yet to be determined in Australia, with the social media giant Meta persistence To push for the introduction of checks into mobile app stores in an attempt to avoid having to implement the technology on its own platforms. Allen expects a mix of approaches.
“I expect to see age verification, age estimation, age inference. I think we’ll see a combination of all of those.”
Privacy on demand
Privacy has become a selling point for newer forms of age security, Allen explains.
“Age verification has been around for years and years and years,” he points out. “This has been around online since the advent of online gambling in the 1990s. So the process isn’t new – what’s new in the last few years is figuring out how to do it in a way that preserves privacy. So instead of taking a regular photo of your passport and attaching it to an email Sending it out over the air and hoping for the best, technology is now more designed around privacy and security.
Allen downplays privacy concerns about data being shared inappropriately, saying that third-party age assurance providers “generally” will only provide a yes/no answer to an age verification question (for example, “Are you over the age of This person is 16 years old? , thus reducing the data they return to the platform to reduce privacy risks.
Allen argues that broader concerns about age assurance as a factor enabling mass surveillance of web users are misplaced.
“These are the people who don’t understand how this technology works,” he claims. “It doesn’t create anything that you can conduct surveillance on. None of the systems we test have the concept of a central database or the concept of traceability, and the international standard specifically prohibits that from happening. So there are a lot of myths about what this technology does and doesn’t do.”
A growing industry
Uti declined to “pre-guess” the outcome of the trial, or what “methods or thresholds” Australian lawmakers might consider “proportionate” to put it in that context. But the industry will look closely at how much margin of error is allowed using techniques such as facial age estimation, where the user is asked to show their face to the camera.
Low-friction verifications like this are likely to be attractive to social media companies – in fact, some platforms (such as Instagram) have already tested selfie-based age verifications. It’s much easier to convince camera-loving teens to take a selfie than to have them find and hold up a digital ID, for example. But it’s not clear whether lawmakers will allow that.
“We don’t know yet whether the regulatory body will set no barrier, a one-, two-, or three-year barrier for estimating facial age,” Uti told us, making the case for more wiggle room around the margin of error in estimating facial age. -Tooth examination. “They may consider that if there are fewer alternatives to government-issued documents for 16-year-olds, with high levels of security, then there will be no proportionate barrier.”
With growing interest from lawmakers, Allen expects more senior and corporate insurance technologies to emerge in the coming years.
“There is an open call for participation (in the Australian age insurance trial) so… I think there will be an open call for participation,” he points out. “We’re seeing new ideas. There’s a question at the moment about whether you can do age verification with your pulse… which is interesting. So we’ll see if that develops. There are others around as well. The movement of the hand and the geometry of your fingers is a movement Others we’ve seen recently.
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