Latest news with #ageVerification
New York Times
07-08-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Britain Forces Porn Sites to Get Serious on ‘Age-Gating'
Britain recently implemented new rules requiring internet users to verify their age before entering sites with content that is potentially harmful for children, including pornography and material encouraging violence or self-harm. The rules are part of the Online Safety Act, legislation passed in 2023 that is one of the most far-reaching efforts by a Western democracy to regulate online content. The new age-verification rules, which went into effect July 25, aim to shield minors from harmful online content, including from websites that promote suicide or eating disorders. The British government said that during the month of July alone, 16 percent of teenagers had seen material online that stigmatizes body types or promotes disordered eating. The rules are being closely watched in Europe, the United States and Australia, which plans in December to remove more than a million young teens from social media by setting a minimum age of 16. Here's what to know about the act: What do the rules cover? The act applies to websites, social media services, consumer file cloud storage and sharing sites, online forums, dating apps and instant messaging services. All are now required to verify visitors' ages if their platforms contain harmful or age-inappropriate content. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Identity & Access Forum Debuts Landmark Guide to Mobile Identity Use Cases for Age Verified Purchases
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., July 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mobile Driver's Licenses (mDLs) are no longer a future concept. They're reshaping how identity is verified globally. With 14 U.S. states already offering interoperable mDLs and 19 more working on implementation, the foundation for nationwide adoption is rapidly taking shape. The Identity & Access Forum today announces the publication of a new resource, 'Mobile Identity Use Cases in Age Verification for Alcohol Purchase.' It's the industry's first comprehensive guide outlining how ISO/IEC 18013-5 and ISO/IEC 18013-7 compliant mDLs can improve privacy and verify age for regulated transactions, including alcohol purchases. The document showcases real-world implementations for in-person, unattended, and over-the-Internet use cases and offers guidance for integrating secure, privacy-preserving mobile identity into age-restricted commerce. As state-issued mDLs become more widely available across the U.S., there is growing demand for trusted frameworks that support their acceptance to improve business processes. This resource, developed by the Forum's mDL Alcohol Age Verification Working Group, is designed to help alcohol retailers, delivery services, and technology providers understand how to verify customer age using mDLs while complying with state regulations and improving customer control and privacy. The resource presents three primary use cases: In-person age verification at a licensed establishment, such as a bar or liquor store Unattended self-service scenarios, such as kiosks or self-checkout lanes Remote transactions such as online alcohol purchases for home delivery Each use case includes implementation considerations, technical requirements, privacy protections, and compliance needs based on international standards like ISO/IEC 18013-5 and 18013-7. The document also addresses fraud prevention, user authentication, auditability, and system integration. 'This guide, and the Identity and Access Forum's work as a whole, marks a significant step forward for the industry,' said Christina Hulka, executive director of the Secure Technology Alliance, the parent organization of the Identity & Access Forum. 'At the Alliance, we are deeply committed to enabling the adoption of privacy-enhancing, trusted, standards-based credentials like mDLs. Credentials that give individuals control over their personal information while providing businesses and regulators with a highly secure, cryptographically protected means of verifying age and ID. We're showcasing how mDLs can be applied today to solve real-world challenges like age verification, and it paves the way for broader acceptance and innovation.' The Forum developed this guide as part of its ongoing work to advance mobile identity acceptance across regulated industries. Additional resources, including education briefs and use case templates, are available on the Secure Technology Alliance website and Organizations, associations, government agencies and individuals interested in participating in upcoming Identity and Access Forum projects can learn more online. Your participation and interest are welcome! By joining the Secure Technology Alliance, members gain access to activities within the Identity and Access Forum, the U.S. Payments Forum and additional Alliance working committees. About the Identity and Access Forum The Identity and Access Forum is a cooperative, cross-industry body dedicated to advancing the adoption and development of secure identification including physical and logical access. Through the collaborative efforts of a diverse group of stakeholders and the publication of educational resources, the Forum advocates for market adoption of trusted, user-centric and interoperable digital identities to ensure safe and seamless access to services across all interactions. Areas of focus are identity credentials such as mobile drivers' licenses and IDs for provisioning, IoT security and access control, among others. The organization operates within the Secure Technology Alliance, an association that encompasses all aspects of secure digital technologies. About the Secure Technology Alliance The Secure Technology Alliance is the digital security industry's premier association. Through its U.S. Payments Forum, Identity and Access Forum and its collaborative working groups, the Alliance fosters open dialogue among industry stakeholders to explore and develop secure technology innovations in the payments, identity and access markets. By collaborating on education and guidance, the Alliance helps enable efficient, timely and effective implementation of large-scale, disruptive technologies. Contact: Sherlyn Rijos-Altman Montner Tech PR Srijos@ in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
15-07-2025
- Health
- TechCrunch
Reddit rolls out age verification in the UK to comply with new rules
Reddit users in the United Kingdom are now required to verify their age as a way to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content. The new requirement comes after the U.K.'s Online Safety Act (OSA) introduced new steps for platforms to take to block children from encountering harmful content, like pornography and material promoting self-harm. Reddit will use the third-party service Persona to confirm a user's age, necessitating users to submit a picture of their government-issued identity documents or take a selfie. Reddit said it will not have access to these images, and will only save the person's verification status and their date of birth. Restricted content to be hidden from users under 18 includes sexually explicit posts, anything that encourages suicide and disordered eating, and posts that spread hate against other people based on their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, and gender, among other violent and harmful content. Critics have long warned of the security and privacy risks associated with private companies collecting and storing large amounts of people's identity documents. Last week, Bluesky announced that users in the UK will be required to verify their age in light of OSA's update.
CNN
27-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Texas porn age verification law upheld by Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law that requires age verification for pornographic websites in one of the most closely watched First Amendment cases to arrive at the high court in years. The adult entertainment industry had challenged the Texas law as violating the Constitution because it restricted the ability of adults to access protected online speech. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for a 6-3 court divided along ideological grounds with the court's three liberals dissenting. 'The statute advances the state's important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content,' Thomas wrote. 'And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.' Texas' law requires any website that publishes a substantial amount of content that is 'harmful to minors' to verify the age of users. The challengers said the law forces adults to identify themselves – such as by providing an ID – before accessing pornography, which the group's lawyers said violates access to free speech online because it would 'chill' adults' access to that content. Texas' law is similar to more than a dozen others across the country that require users to submit some form of proof of adulthood. The Supreme Court, over the past many decades, has embraced a robust view of the First Amendment. Last year, it suggested that social media companies are entitled to First Amendment protection for their content moderation decisions, for instance. In 2023, the court set a higher standard for prosecuting 'true threats' in the case of a man who was convicted of stalking a songwriter. A majority sided with a high school cheerleader in 2021 who argued she could not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds. But it has taken a more nuanced approach when it comes to laws attempting to limit minors' access to obscene material. The Supreme Court in 1997 unanimously invalidated provisions of a federal law intended to protect minors from indecent material online because it also imposed First Amendment burdens on adults. But in reviewing the Texas law, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals relied instead on a 1968 precedent in which the Supreme Court let stand a New York law barring the distribution of obscene material to minors. Throughout the Texas case, there were signs that a majority of the court might side with Texas. The trade group representing the adult entertainment industry asked the justices last year to block the Texas law while their appeal was considered. But the Supreme Court rejected that request at the time, allowing the law to remain in effect temporarily. It did so in a one-sentence order without explanation. This time, the Supreme Court was asked specifically what level of 'scrutiny' must be applied to the law. That's a legal term that, normally, decides a First Amendment case. If the highest level of scrutiny – known as 'strict scrutiny' – applies, it makes it nearly impossible for a law restricting protected speech to stand. The lowest level of scrutiny, in this case 'rational basis,' almost always works out in the government's favor. The appeals court applied rational-basis review and found that Texas has a 'legitimate interest in preventing minors' access to pornography,' and so it upheld the law. During oral arguments in January, several of the justices signaled they might send the case back to the 5th Circuit to have the appeals court decide if it clears the strict scrutiny hurdle. Several of the conservatives suggested during arguments that it appeared the Texas law might be able to withstand strict scrutiny. In order to satisfy strict scrutiny, a government must have a 'compelling' interest to infringe on a constitutional right and its law must be 'narrowly tailored' to address that interest without sweeping too broadly. During oral arguments, several of the court's conservatives threw cold water on the adult entertainment industry's proposed solution to the issue of minors accessing pornography online: content filtering software. The existence of those systems, those justices said, suggested that Texas could have addressed the problem of minors accessing porn through a more limited means. But at least three justices signaled that approach was insufficient, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who drew from personal experience when she told the lawyer that the software was far from being foolproof. Barrett has seven children. 'Kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers. Let me just say that content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with,' she said. 'And I think that the explosion of addiction to online porn has shown that content filtering isn't working,' Barrett added. Several members of the court also questioned the Supreme Court's 1960s-era precedents given the nature of today's pornography. Chief Justice John Roberts repeatedly questioned the usefulness of decades-old precedents as the nature of technology and porn has changed. 'One of the things that's striking about the case,' Roberts said in January, was the 'dramatic change' in people's ability to access pornography online compared to the 'brick-and-mortar' magazine stores of the past.
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
US Supreme Court poised to rule in challenge to Texas age-check for online porn
By Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on Friday in a challenge on free speech grounds to a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify the age of users in a case testing the legality of state efforts to keep minors from viewing such material online. A trade group representing adult entertainment performers and companies appealed a lower court's decision allowing the Republican-led state's age-verification mandate, finding that it likely did not violate the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment safeguard against government abridgment of speech. The Texas measure is one of 24 similar ones enacted around the United States, primarily in Republican-governed states, with some set to take effect in the months ahead, according to the Free Speech Coalition, which challenged the law. The law requires websites whose content is more than a third "sexual material harmful to minors" to have all users submit personally identifying information verifying they are at least age 18 to gain access. The case tested the limits of state powers to protect minors from explicit materials deemed by policymakers to be harmful to them with measures that burden the access of adults to constitutionally protected expression. Supreme Court precedents have protected access by adults to non-obscene sexual content on First Amendment grounds, including a 2004 ruling that blocked a federal law similar to the Texas measure. If the 2004 precedent prevents Texas from enforcing its law, then it should be overruled, the state argued, noting how the digital landscape has changed dramatically in the two decades since. The coalition, a trade association of adult content performers, producers and distributors, as well as companies that run pornographic websites including and argued that online age verification unlawfully stifles the free speech rights of adults and exposes them to increasing risks of identity theft, extortion and data breaches. Some sites like Pornhub blocked access entirely in states with age-verification laws. Steps such as content-filtering software or on-device age verification would better protect minors while respecting the rights of adults, according to the challengers. During Jan. 15 arguments in the case, the justices voiced worries about the pervasiveness of pornography online and the ease with which minors are able to access it. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of school-age children, noted that minors can get online porn through cellphones, tablets, gaming systems and computers, and noted that there has been an "explosion of addiction to online porn." But some of the justices also expressed concern over the burdens imposed on adults to view constitutionally protected material, debating whether the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should have applied a stricter form of judicial review to the Texas law than the one it actually used that gave deference to legislators. U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra issued a preliminary injunction in 2023, blocking the law. The 5th Circuit ruled in 2024 that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed in their First Amendment challenge to the age-verification requirement, lifting Ezra's injunction on that provision. The 5th Circuit upheld Ezra's injunction against another provision requiring websites to display "health warnings" about viewing pornography. The Supreme Court last year declined to halt enforcement of the law while the case proceeded.
