EFF: Age Verification Becomes a Surveillance Tactic
Despite originating as a way to protect children from harms in the digital world, age-verification practices have morphed into a serious risk to privacy and digital rights, Rindala Alajaji, legislative activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wrote in a blog Friday. “What started as a misguided attempt to protect minors from ‘explicit’ content online has spiraled into a tangled mess of privacy-invasive surveillance schemes affecting skincare products, dating apps, and even diet pills, threatening everyone’s right to privacy."
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And passing these laws impacts more than the children they’re aimed at protecting, she said. “Age-verification laws do far more than ‘protect children online’ -- they require the creation of a system that collects vast amounts of personal information from everyone.” Alajaji continued, “Instead of making the internet safer for children, these laws force all users -- regardless of age -- to verify their identity just to access basic content or products. This isn't a mistake; it's a deliberate strategy.”
A recent trend has age-verification bills being introduced in state legislatures across the country (see 2503060022), but some go beyond online safety, she said. For example, California’s AB-728 would require purchasers of skincare products that contain certain chemicals -- like Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy acids -- verify their age before buying the item. Washington’s SB-5622 restricts anyone younger than 18 from purchasing diet pills or supplements.
While the aim of these bills is to protect kids from harmful substances, the issue lies with the legislation’s requirements to submit sensitive personal data before completing a transaction, Alajaji said. Sponsors of age-verification bills “recognized that targeting porn would be an easier way to introduce these age-verification systems, knowing it would be more emotionally charged and easier to pass,” she said. “This is just the beginning of a broader surveillance system disguised as a safety measure.”
Though providers and verification proponents claim otherwise, “no method of age verification is both privacy-protective and entirely accurate,” Alajaji said. “The methods also don’t fall on a neat spectrum of ‘more safe’ to ‘less safe.’ Instead, every form of age verification is better described as ‘dangerous in one way’ or ‘dangerous in a different way.’”
She said these bills burden adults who want to use the internet -- or buy skincare products or diet pills -- without subjecting themselves to data collection. “When an age verification system requires users to submit government-issued identification or a scan of their face, it collects a staggering amount of sensitive, often immutable, biometric or other personal data—jeopardizing internet users’ privacy and security,” Alajaji said. “Systems that rely on credit card information, phone numbers, or other third-party material similarly amass troves of personal data. This data is just as susceptible to being misused as any other data, creating vulnerabilities for identity theft and data breaches … These are real, ongoing concerns for anyone who values their privacy.”