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posted by janrinok on Thursday April 18 2019, @05:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the porn-just-wants-to-be-freeeee! dept.

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Porn block: UK to require age checks for adult content as of July 15

Porn sites serving UK users will soon be required to confirm the age of visitors before letting them access content, the British government said Wednesday. As of July 15, commercial providers of pornography will have to ensure that only those over the age of 18 are able to access adult content, to protect minors.

It'll be up to individual sites and services to choose how they carry out verification. Options include face-to-face verification in stores, which would let people buy a so-called "porn pass," or the use of a service like Mindgeek's AgeID system, which lets people upload scans of their passports or driving licenses to be verified by a third party.

Age checks were originally supposed to come into effect this spring as part of the Digital Economy Act 2017, but they were delayed while the government worked out the details of the new rules. The British Board of Film Classification will be in charge of ensuring that porn sites comply with the law. Those that fail to do so could be blocked.

"Adult content is currently far too easy for children to access online," Margot James, UK minister for digital, said in a statement. "The introduction of mandatory age-verification is a world-first, and we've taken the time to balance privacy concerns with the need to protect children from inappropriate content."

Opponents of the new rules pointed out that they won't cover smaller sites or social networks, and can be circumvented by the use of VPNs. Others fear the systems used to verify age will be open to exploitation, and could result in people's privacy being violated and their browsing histories being circulated beyond their control.

"Having some age verification that is good and other systems that are bad is unfair and a scammer's paradise -- of the government's own making," Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group, said in a statement. "Data leaks could be disastrous. And they will be the government's own fault. The government needs to shape up and legislate for privacy before their own policy results in people being outed, careers destroyed or suicides being provoked."

Also at ZDNet


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @11:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @11:17AM (#832111)

    The Australian government requires 100 points of ID to register a phone sim card. This is to prevent the use of burner phones and the like. When I decided to join one of the smaller companies who have retail stores I found that they require you to scan photo ID, and two other ids or documents to prove identity and upload this scan to their internet server. They promise to delete it afterward.

    When I rang then I got their call centre in England. Right.

    If my identity is stolen I plan on suing the government over this.

    Anyone with that scan of my ID documents can pretend to be me easily. Sure my identity is now somehow linked to that sim. How is this helping overall?