As found by the Internet Matters survey, it seems that the “safety” regulations required by the UK’s “Online Safety Act,” that went into effect last year, don’t seem to be doing a whole lot of “protecting.” Of the 1000 kids surveyed, 46% say the checks are easy to bypass, only 17% claim they’re hard to get around.
The workarounds are myriad – the headline only focuses on the one that’s both the funniest and the most damning, but other methods mentioned include using pictures of video game characters, lying about their birthdays, and the old classics – either just snatch an adult’s ID long enough to get a picture, or just getting a “cool parent” to sign them up. Internet Matters found that 17% of parents admitted to actively helping their kids get around the check, and 9% more just looked the other way.
We need to ban mustaches. Think of the children!
Well great now they ruined the fun with this article
> “Stronger action is needed from both government and industry to ensure that children can only access online services appropriate for their age and stage and where safety is built in from the outset, rather than added in response to harm,” Huggins said in the report.
They want more invasive age verification.
Age verification and age assurance are unacceptable privacy violation that only exist to steal personal information. Mandatory age verification needs to be illegal for social media, mature content, and other services that aren’t government sites, drugs/alcohol, or financial services.
4 comments
As found by the Internet Matters survey, it seems that the “safety” regulations required by the UK’s “Online Safety Act,” that went into effect last year, don’t seem to be doing a whole lot of “protecting.” Of the 1000 kids surveyed, 46% say the checks are easy to bypass, only 17% claim they’re hard to get around.
The workarounds are myriad – the headline only focuses on the one that’s both the funniest and the most damning, but other methods mentioned include using pictures of video game characters, lying about their birthdays, and the old classics – either just snatch an adult’s ID long enough to get a picture, or just getting a “cool parent” to sign them up. Internet Matters found that 17% of parents admitted to actively helping their kids get around the check, and 9% more just looked the other way.
We need to ban mustaches. Think of the children!
Well great now they ruined the fun with this article
> “Stronger action is needed from both government and industry to ensure that children can only access online services appropriate for their age and stage and where safety is built in from the outset, rather than added in response to harm,” Huggins said in the report.
They want more invasive age verification.
Age verification and age assurance are unacceptable privacy violation that only exist to steal personal information. Mandatory age verification needs to be illegal for social media, mature content, and other services that aren’t government sites, drugs/alcohol, or financial services.