Break privacy to make privacy? Digital ID checks aren’t the answer
Break privacy to make privacy? Digital ID checks aren’t the answer
Publish Date: 2026-03-17 09:17:00
Source Domain: www.openrightsgroup.org
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently published an open letter to online platforms providers, calling them “to strengthen age assurance measures to ensure young children are not accessing services that are not designed for them”.
The letter comes after a £14m fine issued against Reddit for its reliance on self-declaratory age checks. According to the ICO, children under the age of 13 would have been able to provide false information when self-declaring their age — thus, Reddit would have processed their data unlawfully.
This decision is concerning on several fronts. The ICO are actively encouraging platforms to adopt more invasive verification technologies, at a time when privacy violations and malpractice are starting to emerge within the industry. Further, the ICO characterisation of age assurance technology as “advanced” and “readily available” comes as hundreds of computer scientists call for a moratorium on the role out of this technology and warn about the technical limitations and infeasibility of this approach.
In the meanwhile, Parliament is getting ready to approve proposals to further restrict children’s access to the Internet, informed by unrealistic expectations over the effectiveness of age-gating. As dysfunctional legislative and regulatory policies converge, they risk fuelling a never-ending demand for more layers of Internet control.
Digital identity systems disguised as “age checks”
The Online Safety Act requires online service providers to introduce age checks, and to prevent children from accessing certain kind of content (also known as age-gating). Contrary to the age checks we are familiar with in the offline world, online these are digital identity process that are often invasive of our privacy. If users are not allowed to self-declare their age, these digital identity systems will be performed by:
- Scanning your face, or other biometric data, to guess your…
