Kids are foiling age-checks online – here’s how we fix it

New legislation requires websites to verify the age of anyone accessing adult content, but they’re being outwitted. There may be a better solution at hand

- Anthony Cuthbertson

It took until 10am on the day when the UK’s new online age checks came into force for people to figure out an absurd workaround.

The rules brought in by the Online Safety Act meant that websites hosting pornographic or adult content were required to “robustly” age-check users, with one popular method being a facial recognition tool that estimates a person’s age from a picture of their face.

One way to bypass this, it soon transpired, was to fool the software by using an image of a character from a video game. The photo-realistic protagonist of Death Stranding was enough to allow visitors to skirt past the barriers set up by third-party face-scanning systems Persona and k-ID, which were used by Reddit and Discord.

It was not the only way to bypass the newly restricted parts of the internet. There was a sudden surge in demand for virtual private networks (VPNs), as web users sought to spoof their device’s location to countries without the web restrictions.

VPN review site VPNMentor observed a 6,000 per cent increase in demand after the law came into effect on 25 July. The company noted that this trend raises critical questions about the effectiveness of the measures designed to protect children’s online safety, as well as the risks involved in complying with them by submitting photos, ID documents or financial data.

When similar laws came into force across more than a dozen US states, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that online age verification exposed every website visitor to privacy and security dangers.

“Records of our personal information tied to details of the adult content we watch, sexual questions we have, or interests or identities we’re exploring could make millions of people vulnerable to harassment, blackmail and exploitation,” Antonio Serrano, advocacy director at the ACLU, said in January.