Facial age verification: Can it be fooled and how safe is it? |
Though we’ve had a full year to contemplate the idea of age-restricted social media platforms, in some ways it feels as though certain questions are only being asked and answered now, with less than a week to go until Australia’s world-first laws come into effect. And foremost in the minds of many is the idea of facial age verification.
Why is the government asking social media companies to scan our faces? How does the tech work? How safe and secure is it? Are there any major downsides? And, importantly given the reports of under-16s circumventing the measures using the faces of their parents just days after the first apps put age verification in place, will it actually work as intended?
How safe and accurate is it to let platforms verify your age by scanning your face?Credit: Aresna Villanueva
Facial age estimation is just one form of technology that will be used to comply with the social media ban. As part of the new laws, social media companies will be legally required to keep Australian under-16s off their services to the best of their abilities. But the government has also been clear that they’re not to rely solely on government-issued photo IDs, which are by far the most reliable and accurate way of verifying someone’s age.
It’s not that it’s impossible to safely verify your age online with a photo ID. We’ve all provided our passwords, credit card information and other important data to websites millions of times, and the amount of it that ends up in the wrong hands is relatively small, because the services we trust use systems that verify and discard — or encrypt securely and store — that data. Similar systems work for age verification from photo IDs as well.
But people don’t trust social media companies. And we’re not just talking about huge multinationals here; the government’s age restrictions apply to any service that meet its content guidelines, meaning much smaller apps as well. If it allowed them to ask every Australian for a photo ID as a condition of entry, some of the data would undoubtedly end up in places it shouldn’t be.
As long as they offer a reasonable alternative to photo ID, social media companies are being allowed to choose which methods they use to verify ages, though the office of the eSafety commissioner has provided extensive guidance on technology types and safety standards. So it’s not necessarily the case that all platforms will use facial verification. But given its proven use around the world as a quick, safe, non-intrusive and reasonably accurate........