Porn age checks - Surely a good thing?

Where are you all seeing these age verification prompts? I've not encountered a single one yet. Seems like people are making a lot of fuss over nothing.

Yeah, I know. It's the very definition of "written by committee". I've had to wade through over 1000 pages of that rubbish, and I know that I'm missing at least 30% of it because I just ran out of energy.

I've made it 5 pages in before giving up on the absolutely bullshit and convoluted speech going on

It doesn't make sense

sigh

No. The session you had on the porn site is now linked to the session at the age-check provider, which holds your phone number. This is held in their databases, not your cookies, so a private browser session is irrelevant.

What you don't know is what the commercial arrangement is between those two companies regarding data sharing (ie how much of the age check data the porn site has access to), or how long either dataset is held for.

None of this information would have been given before - the porn site wouldn't have had access to any of it.

That means that there now potentially exists a log of your phone number against all the pages you looked at in that session on the porn site. This potential was impossible prior to this law coming in, unless (for some reason) you volunteered your phone number to the porn site - which I'm assuming you wouldn't have been mad enough to do.

So now, in the age of new sites losing control of their data every day, you have to ask: how comfortable are you with that log being released and made public, and subsequently linked to your name via public information (the link with your phone number)?

Genuine question: do you still believe that this law is about age checks for porn?

To get you started in answering the question, here's the handy short version of the risk assessment guidance:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/risk-assessment-guidance-and-risk-profiles.pdf?v=390984

It's only 84 pages, so shouldn't take you too long to get through. A good exercise for answering the question would be to consider how often it mentions legal adult-only content.

I feel quite unsettled by it strangely.
I think it's a bit of a gimmick and won't actually stop teens watching porn.. but I think it's also a massive privacy issue and overstep of the government.
Ordinary parental controls and safe searches that parents can put on their computers should be enough.
I feel like this move is invasive.. what next?
I also worry about how pornography is defined. Some art and general scientific information may be at risk of being unnecessarily censored.
I also feel like there's a creeping wave of puritanism coming across from the Trump administration that will do no one anywhere any real good.
I personally err on the side of more comprehensive sex education in schools earlier.
I don't think porn can be eradicated and the more it's repressed the weirder and more extreme it gets.
It's a reflection of the wider culture. A symptom not a cause. I don't think the real problems of objectification and misogyny are actually being addressed. Seems just like a sticking plaster to keep certain sections of society happy.
No I don't agree with it.

I said that support groups would be affected and people said I was wrong because they didn't "promote or glorify"

And yet

I was unable to access an alcohol support site for the same reason.

Easy to use, but now everything you browse is being stored/tracked and linked to you mobile number, are you happy for this information to be potentially leaked in the future??

OR you bypass the controls with VPN, or find more dodgy content on less controlled websites...

You can argue the aim is coming from a good place, however the implementation and technology is completely flawed, can easily be bypassed with VPN, and also pushes both adults and children to more dodgy sites (dark web) which contain more harmful material which is not controlled, where content can be monitored and used to potentially blackmail people.

It's not just porn though

Technically even Facebook should have these checks. Spotify, YouTube, Discord... all are being hit

Sites people need to use to work

And it's still not the same as showing ID in a shop

Then if you don't want to verify your age by whichever method is being requested, you can instead choose not to access the website. Same as if you didn't want to show your ID in a shop or a bar.

The tiny chance that CCTV at a shop/bar gets stolen and the picture will clearly show the details on the ID shown is in no way comparable to uploading your details to the Internet 🤣

We don't all use Google Wallet because we don't like having our cards uploaded like that either

That's not one of the ways listed though...

In fact one (not porn) site will only use face scans

Hardly the same. And there is a major data breach of some reputable large company that ought to have better systems in place pretty well every month.

What if the shop's CCTV gets hacked or stolen? Same thing, just as unlikely.

https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-identity-verifications

Google are putting age verification in their wallet app so you don't have to upload anything.

But the local shopkeeper doesn't leak all your details in a data breach.

I'm fine with children needing to prove their age, not sure how well that will work - but this implies everyone needs to prove their age across multiple platforms.

It's basically not

When you hand over your driving license or passport or whatever to the shopkeeper/bartender/security guard then they look at it and hand it back. No record. No digital footprint. No data to potentially be hacked and leaked

When you upload a picture of the documents... well...

It's not a big deal to have to prove your age. If you've ever bought alcohol, tobacco, knives you likely had to do this, at least as a younger adult. If that's not a problem then this shouldn't be, it's basically the same thing.

I welcome anything that keeps children safe online but this act is naive and flawed. You don't even need a VPN to circumvent this law me and DH simply typed "free porn" into Google and there were multiple sites on the first page with no restrictions (I don't recommend trying this yourself).

All this law has done has made non porn content harder to access for adults and made the internet even more unsafe for children who are now exposed to unregulated websites run buy the same criminals who run pirate streaming sites that don't care what they host.

The proverbial Pandora's box has already been opened and ofcom will now spend years playing wack a mole shutting down websites only for 10 more to pop up the same day.

I'm in no way pro porn but thinking age checks on a few sites will solve the problem when companies and governments can't even stop piracy is beyond silly