{"id":219329,"date":"2026-03-03T05:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/03\/europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification-push-amid-privacy-fears\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T06:00:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T11:00:26","slug":"europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification-push-amid-privacy-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/03\/europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification-push-amid-privacy-fears\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe pressed to slow digital age-verification push amid privacy fears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dig.watch\/updates\/europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification\">Europe pressed to slow digital age-verification push amid privacy fears<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dig.watch\/updates\/europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification\">https:\/\/dig.watch\/updates\/europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-03 05:46:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"dig.watch\">dig.watch<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Experts urge Europe to delay age-verification mandates until evidence is clear.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Hundredsof\">Hundreds of academics urged governments to halt plans for mandatory age checks on social media, rather than accelerating deployment without assessing the risks.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Thewarning\">The warning arrives as several European states consider restrictions on children\u2019s access to online platforms and as companies promote verification tools such as live selfies or uploads of government-issued IDs.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Researchersargue\">Researchers argue that current systems expose people to privacy breaches, security vulnerabilities and malicious sites that ignore verification rules instead of offering meaningful protection.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Theysay\">They say scientific consensus has not yet formed on the benefits or harms of age-assurance technologies, making large-scale implementation premature and potentially discriminatory.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Theletter\">The letter stresses that any credible system would require cryptographic safeguards for every query, protecting data in transit rather than leaving identity checks to platforms without robust technical guarantees.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Academicsbelieve\">Academics believe such infrastructure would be complex to build globally and would create friction that many providers may refuse to adopt.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Concernescalated\">Concern escalated after early deployments in Italy and France, where verification is already mandatory.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Signatoriesincluding\">Signatories, including Ronald Rivest and Bart Preneel, warn that governments risk introducing a socially unacceptable system that increases exposure to data misuse instead of ensuring children\u2019s safety online.<\/p>\n<p id=\"Wouldyou\"><strong>Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy<\/strong>?\u00a0<strong>If so,\u00a0ask our Diplo chatbot!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dig.watch\/updates\/europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Europe pressed to slow digital age-verification push amid privacy fears https:\/\/dig.watch\/updates\/europe-pressed-to-slow-digital-age-verification Publish Date: 2026-03-03 05:46:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/diplo-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com\/2024\/07\/eu-cybersecurity-standards.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219329"}],"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=219329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219331,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219329\/revisions\/219331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}