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UK regulator Ofcom has announced new recommendations to help protect children from accessing online pornography that includes calls for porn sites to scan users\u2019 faces in order to prove their age.<\/p>\n
Currently there are little to no age checking measures for people accessing online porn in the UK, with either immediate access to websites or easily passed tick boxes to confirm you\u2019re over 18.<\/p>\n
Facial age estimation scanning was one of the age identification methods suggested in the new guidelines, alongside other methods such as sharing bank account details, photo ID checks, and credit card checks to prove the age of porn users.<\/p>\n
If brought into law, it could mean your computer\u2019s webcam or smartphone\u2019s selfie camera scanning your face to determine you\u2019re over 18 before the device will let you access adult content, similar to the FaceID scanning on an iPhone or controversial facial identification technology used by police forces around the world.<\/p>\n
The proposed crackdown is designed to protect UK kids from viewing adult content at inappropriately young ages. Ofcom quoted research that said the average age UK children first watch porn is 13, and one in ten can be just 10 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cPornography is too readily accessible to children online, and the new online safety laws are clear that must change,\u201d said Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes. \u201cOur practical guidance sets out a range of methods for highly effective age checks. We\u2019re clear that weaker methods \u2013 such as allowing users to self-declare their age \u2013 won\u2019t meet this standard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ofcom\u2019s calls for new porn check tech comes after the UK\u2019s new Online Safety Act came into law in October. It broadly attempts to shift responsibility for who accesses online content to tech companies, which includes online porn sites providing UK visitors with age check verification.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of their approach, we expect all services to offer robust protection to children from stumbling across pornography, and also to take care that privacy rights and freedoms for adults to access legal content are safeguarded,\u201d Dawes said.<\/p>\n
If brought into law, the age checks – including possible face scanning – would be brought into law after Ofcom provides its final decisions in 2025, after which the Government would have to make sure changes were made.<\/p>\n
But a new report from the European Policy Information Center (EPICENTER) suggests actually implementing age check rules for porn would be \u201cpractically impossible\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs seen in the UK, users may shift to using VPNs and other systems to circumvent controls, with the paradoxical risk of fueling traffic to less monitored and less secure platforms and applications,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n