NEW internet safety laws in the UK will now require pornographic websites to verify the age of its users.
The bill, which is part of the draft Online Safety Bill, intends to provide greater protection for children against explicit material.
To guarantee that users are 18 or older, users may be asked to show proof of credit card ownership or validate their age through a third-party service.
Failure to act on the company’s part could result in a fine of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover.
The Online Safety Bill, which is aimed at protecting users from harmful content, is anticipated to be submitted into parliament in the coming months.
Children’s safety organizations have long advocated for age verification on porn sites, citing concerns that kids have too easy access to publicly available content online.
Similar proposals were made in the past, but they were dropped in 2019.
According to studies, half of 11 to 13-year-olds have seen pornography at some point in their lives.
Children’s experts say it offers them inappropriate views of sex and consent, placing them at risk of predators and maybe preventing them from reporting cases of sexual abuse.
Digital Economy Minister Chris Philp said when announcing the age verification plans, “Parents deserve peace of mind that their children are protected online from seeing things no child should see.”
The regulator Ofcom has the power to punish websites that do not obey the rules, as well as prohibit them from being accessed in the UK.
If the owners of these websites do not cooperate with Ofcom, they may even face criminal charges.
Previously, the Online Safety Bill only applied to commercial porn sites that allowed user-generated content, but now all commercial porn sites will be affected.
Some campaigners however raised concerns over the fact that blackmailers would be able to easily hack a database of pornography consumers while using the age verification providers.
However, Iain Corby, executive director of the Age Verification Providers Association, noted that the companies he represents have devised a variety of methods for proving someone’s age online without revealing their identify to the websites they visit.
“By using independent, third-party organizations which are audited and certified to comply with the highest standards of data protection and security, adults can be confident their own privacy will be preserved while their children are protected.”
