The United Kingdom has begun enforcing the age verification aspect of its 2023 Online Safety Act, requiring all platforms to ensure that young users do not have access to harmful content online. Katie Collins, a senior European correspondent for CNET, joins CBS to discuss.

London

The United Kingdom has implemented age verification measures as part of its Online Safety Act, requiring online platforms to confirm users' ages using methods such as photo ID matching, banking information, and facial age estimation. These steps are intended to prevent minors from accessing harmful content online. However, the new requirements have proven unpopular, with many users attempting to bypass them using VPNs or spoofing technologies. 

Critics argue that the measures may drive young users toward less regulated corners of the internet and raise significant privacy and data security concerns, especially as third-party companies handle sensitive information. The UK is seen as a test case for similar legislation being considered in the United States and other countries, with global regulators closely monitoring the outcomes.

UK begins enforcing age verifications for online safety

The United Kingdom, though, has begun enforcing an age verification aspect of its 2023 Online Safety Act, requiring platforms to ensure that young users do not have access to harmful content online. And age verification methods include photo I.D. matching, banking and phone network information, facial age estimation and digital identity services. Katie Collins joins us now. She's a senior European correspondent for CNET. And Katie, thanks for being with us. Can you talk to us about how these verifications work and are they foolproof? Are users in the UK finding ways still to bypass them? Yeah, I mean, what we're seeing so far is that the age verification is not proving terribly popular in the UK. We are seeing a number of different ways in which people are trying to bypass them. I think the number one way is that people are really searching for and downloading free VPNs. This is software that allows you to kind of disguise your location and make it think that you're perhaps in a country where age verification laws aren't in place. At CNET, we would highly advise anyone against using free VPNs for security reasons. But we're also seeing, you know, a number of cases where people are using screenshots from computer games or other kind of avatars to be able to spoof this technology. So it's definitely not foolproof as far as we can see so far. And you're saying it's not quite as popular either. What are the main arguments for and against using this kind of age verification technology? Yeah, well, I think the kind of the obvious argument in favor is that we want to keep kids safe online, right? We want to protect them from things that they shouldn't be seeing, things like, you know, sexual content, eating disorder content, other violent and harmful content that they might come across. So that is the kind of the overall aim of this legislation is to protect children. There are a whole range of arguments against, starting with the fact that actually some campaigners think that it might actually push children into areas of the internet that remain unregulated and may actually push them towards finding content that's even more appropriate outside of sites that have this age verification technology in place. Secondly, you know, we're relying a lot on third party companies to deploy this technology. And all of these different companies have different ways of determining how to verify people's ages, and they use different data. And, you know, we're seeing increasing security risk around people's data, even just on the same day that this law came into force in the UK, it was the same day that the T app saw a massive data breach in which women's IDs and photos were leaked on the internet. And so that is a really big concern. And Katie, is there any sense that we could see the U.S. implementing similar online restrictions? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, they already are and are planning to in some places. I think it's really important to point to the Supreme Court ruling in June regarding legislation that the state of Texas is trying to bring in at the moment around age verification. And it's not alone in doing this. There are a number of different states in the U.S. that are trying to bring in this legislation at the moment. And, you know, not just in the U.S., other places around the world to Australia, other countries in Europe. I think that what will happen probably before any of that legislation does come in is that the U.K. will be a kind of test bed for how this legislation works in practice, how age verification is, whether it's effective or not. And I think legislators and regulators in the U.S. and around the world will be watching to see how that plays out. All right, Katie Collins, thank you very much.

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