{"id":216836,"date":"2026-02-24T05:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T10:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/us-state-colorado-wants-operating-systems-inlcuding-linux-to-tell-every-app-how-old-you-are\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T05:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T10:55:09","slug":"us-state-colorado-wants-operating-systems-inlcuding-linux-to-tell-every-app-how-old-you-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/us-state-colorado-wants-operating-systems-inlcuding-linux-to-tell-every-app-how-old-you-are\/","title":{"rendered":"US State Colorado Wants Operating Systems (Inlcuding Linux) to Tell Every App How Old You Are"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/colorado-age-attestation-bill\/\">US State Colorado Wants Operating Systems (Inlcuding Linux) to Tell Every App How Old You Are<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/colorado-age-attestation-bill\/\">https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/colorado-age-attestation-bill\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-24 05:32:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"itsfoss.com\">itsfoss.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Age verification online is regrettably becoming the norm. Platforms are increasingly asking users to prove their age before accessing certain content or services. That usually means handing over personal data, sometimes even biometric data, to a third-party provider, <strong>then hoping they do not sell it, suffer a breach<\/strong>, or both.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the U.S. state of Colorado is mulling over a bill to implement age reporting for installing apps on computers and mobile devices.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"age-attestation-what\">Age Attestation, What?<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/2026\/02\/colorado-age-attestation-bill-summary.png\" class=\"kg-image\" alt=\"Bill Summary:  The bill requires an operating system provider to:  Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date or age of the user of that device to provide a signal regarding the user's age bracket (age signal) to applications available in a covered application store; Provide an application developer (developer) that requests an age signal, with respect to a particular user, the technical ability to call an age signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, the user's age-bracket data; and Send only the minimum amount of information necessary to comply with the bill. An operating system provider shall not share an age signal with a third party for a purpose not required by the bill. The bill requires a developer to request an age signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the developer's application is downloaded and launched. A developer that receives an age signal is deemed to have knowledge of the age range of the user to whom that age signal pertains across all platforms of the application and points of access of the application. However, if a developer has clear and convincing information that a user's age is different than the age indicated by an age signal, the developer shall use that information as the primary indicator of the user's age range.  A developer shall not:  Request more information from an operating system provider or a covered application store than is necessary to comply with the bill; or Share an age signal with a third party for a purpose not required by the bill. A person that violates the bill must pay a civil penalty of not more than $2,500 for each minor affected by each negligent violation or not more than $7,500 for each minor affected by each intentional violation. The penalty is assessed and recovered in a civil action brought by the attorney general.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"942\" height=\"763\" srcset=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/size\/w600\/2026\/02\/colorado-age-attestation-bill-summary.png 600w, https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/2026\/02\/colorado-age-attestation-bill-summary.png 942w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 720px) 720px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Senator Matt Ball and Representative Amy Paschal presented this bill, <strong>Age Attestation on Computing Devices<\/strong> (SB26-051), to the Colorado Senate, where it was assigned to the Business, Labor, and Technology Committee.<\/p>\n<p>Currently <strong>only a proposal<\/strong>, the bill calls for operating system providers like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Canonical to present an interface during device account setup that asks the account holder (a person in Colorado) to specify the birth date\/age of the device&#8217;s user.<\/p>\n<p>That age data is then translated into an &#8220;age signal,&#8221; which apps can call on via an API when a user downloads or launches them. The bill claims that this refers to non-personally identifiable data taken from a user&#8217;s birth date or age.<\/p>\n<p>The age signal <strong>does not hand over a specific birthdate to developers<\/strong>. It works in four age ranges \u2014 under 13, 13 to under 16, 16 to under 18, and 18 and above. <\/p>\n<p>The bill also explicitly states that only the minimum amount of information necessary should be shared. Neither the OS provider nor developers are allowed to pass the age signal to third parties for purposes outside of what the bill requires.<\/p>\n<p>On paper, <strong>the fines for violations sound like a serious deterrent<\/strong>. Up to $2,500 per minor affected for a negligent violation and up to $7,500 per minor for an intentional one. For a platform with millions of minor users, those numbers could stack up fast.<\/p>\n<p>But the penalty is only triggered if the state Attorney General chooses to bring a civil&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/colorado-age-attestation-bill\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US State Colorado Wants Operating Systems (Inlcuding Linux) to Tell Every App How Old You&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":216837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/2026\/02\/colorado-age-attestation-bill-banner.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[30,71],"class_list":["post-216836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-breach","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216838,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216836\/revisions\/216838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}