The UK Age Varication rules are pointless

[DVTimes]

I have always been against Age Verification, for several reasons.

1. If you get broadband or a mobile contract, presumably you must be 18 to sign the credit agreement, and so you are already age verified and you should be the one responsible for who uses the broadband.

2. Having age verification on pay porn sites seems nonsense as you cannot access the porn unless you pay. At most the free tour could be safe content, but that is as far as it should go. As if you pay using a credit card, presumably you are 18 to have a credit card.

3. Thousands if not millions of free porn sites such as blogs and tubes will ignore the age verification.

4. It just encourages people to pirate porn.

5. It gives a lot of opportunities to criminals.

6. It is a tool by governments to bring in censorship of the internet slowly.


But the rules Ofcom (the people in charge of age verification in the UK), seem to be things people can probably get around.

I would presume a cheap rubber mask could e used to age verify a persons face.

And how will I prove my age?
There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age.
Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.
Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.
Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.
Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.
Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18.
Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

Link: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safe...know-as-a-user

[mrmister]

How many people under 18 have a mobile contract? The answer is all of them

[blackmonsters]

It's too easy to use AV now to keep crying about it.
See go.cam and get over it.

Once a surfer is verified on one site using go.cam, they are automatically verified on
all sites using it (at least it appears so).
So the faster we use it on our sites, the less time for pirates to get popular.

[Publisher Bucks]

Originally Posted by mrmister

How many people under 18 have a mobile contract? The answer is all of them

In the UK you MUST be 18 years of age to take out a phone contract, that includes a sim plan, pay-as-you-go or a pay-monthly cell phone plan.

If anyone under the age of 18 has one, then the mobile provider who gave them it broke the law in order to do so.

The same is true with credit cards, in order to have a credit card, the person MUST be over the age of 18 unless they've been added to a parents account as an authorized user.

The UK does seem to have all the required systems in place to actually have a working, age verification solution, including the gov.uk login credentials in order to verify an individuals age, without exposing images, additional identification steps, etc.

The problem is, the government cant be seen as to be making online porn a legitimate business, its not good for votes.