Privacy experts concerned about current age verification tools

Over 60 privacy experts, academics, lawyers, and activists from NGOs and civil society organizations from all over the world are worried that current age verification tools aren’t up to the job.

Children and young people are among the most at-risk users on the internet, the experts say. That’s why they deserve an age-appropriate and safe online environment. Age verification tools can help with that, but not in its current form.

Several European member states have been calling for EU-wide rules to age verification, and others have been taking steps to come up with their own solution. However, age verification tools undermine the fundamental rights of all users, exacerbate structural discrimination and create a false sense of security.

“By pursuing age verification as a silver bullet to the complex challenge of addressing children’s needs online, policymakers risk undermining the fundamental rights of children and adults alike while failing to improve their safety and wellbeing,” the privacy experts write in an open letter addressed to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.

They call on the president “to prioritize effective child safety measures while underlining our deep concerns regarding the suitability, proportionality and overall negative effects on fundamental rights of current age verification proposals.”

Declaration-based models, document-based age verification, age estimation approaches: the experts point out that every age verification method has its pitfalls. They can be circumvented through methods like VPNs, but we would also need internationally standardized age verification methods and corresponding ID documents, which we don’t have.

Discrimination is another problem. Studies show that the ages of women and people with Down Syndrome are systematically underestimated. Also, consider that people would have to hand over sensitive personal information to private platforms or third parties, with unknown consequences for the safety and integrity of their data.

Finally, imposing strict age limits on social media and excluding children and young people from these and other online platforms could harm their development. It also prevents them from developing the necessary digital skills that will continue to play a role throughout their (digital) lives.

“Rather than continuing to pursue ill-suited and rights-undermining age verification proposals, we urge the European Commission to advance a more holistic approach to child safety. We propose looking at age verification not just as a technical solution to ensure the safety of children, young people, and adults, but as a spectrum of combined solutions and less invasive measures that can be built up cumulatively,” the experts say.

They think the solution lies in combining less invasive tools with other measures to safeguard children’s online safety. “Methods such as age self-declaration can be placed in conjunction with other measures, such as safety and privacy by design, content labeling and child versions of services.”

The experts call upon the European Commission to make sure that the online safety of children is in line with our fundamental rights.