Age-Verification Rules Can Be Tricky

See How Tech Is Tackling the New Age-Verification Rules: Selfies, government IDs and AI are all being used by companies in efforts to adhere to new laws and regulations aimed at protecting children by Ann-Marie Alcántara of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Age-verification technology—much of it outsourced to third-party providers like Yoti, Incode and Persona to prevent excessive data collection—isn’t always accurate. Legitimate users have complained about being locked out of their accounts. User error is a problem as well, with some failing to provide the proper identification.

Families sometimes willingly give underage kids access. And often, they just don’t know what the kids are up to. Tech-savvy kids find workarounds, such as using VPN services that mask their location."

"People fudge these documents constantly, from pasting a different picture to uploading a high-quality fake ID—sometimes even generating one with AI" 

"The other problem with photo IDs is it assumes that someone will have one and not all people do"

"But it isn’t always easy to tell that the so-called parents are being truthful."

"The verifying process can be hard to get right."

"And the rise of manipulated, deepfake video makes the job even harder"

"But it’s hard enough just differentiating between users in the first place, said Ricanek. “We’re assuming that everybody has their own personalized individualized account and that doesn’t happen as well.”"