{"id":252878,"date":"2026-05-22T17:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T21:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T18:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T22:20:09","slug":"online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Age Checks Create a Pointless Privacy Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newswise.com\/articles\/online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk\">Online Age Checks Create a Pointless Privacy Risk<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newswise.com\/articles\/online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk\">https:\/\/www.newswise.com\/articles\/online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-22 17:50:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.newswise.com\">www.newswise.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Newswise \u2014 New cybersecurity research indicates that one of the world\u2019s leading age verification providers collects and shares highly sensitive personal data\u2014including facial photos and device fingerprints\u2014with third parties.<\/p>\n<p>The research also reveals that most websites that require age verification don\u2019t enforce the policy.<\/p>\n<p>The findings come from a new paper that researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) will present at this week\u2019s IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy conference in San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p>The research team examined Yoti, a London-based company that\u00a0provides age-verification services for an estimated 60% of websites that require it. Its client list includes Meta, OnlyFans, Sony PlayStation, and TikTok.<\/p>\n<p>The research team determined that the process Yoti uses to verify a person\u2019s age broadcasts the person\u2019s personal information to third- and fourth-party companies.<\/p>\n<p>When a bartender checks an ID, they quickly verify a customer\u2019s date of birth and identity before serving them. Companies like Yoti that employ digital age verification claim their products function the same way, but in a completely private manner.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That analogy has justified laws passed in 25 U.S. states \u2014 comprising more than 40% of Americans \u2014 mandating the use of digital age verification to gate access to social media and adult online content.<\/p>\n<p>However, by measuring online age verification, researchers reveal that the reality of these systems is far from ideal. The study found that most sites covered by these laws do not appear to enforce age verification.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When sites comply, they force users to use third-party age-verification services like Yoti, which collect and share highly sensitive data with other third parties.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere have been laws passed and court cases settled on the promise that these companies are incentivized to keep users\u2019 data private\u201d said Assistant Professor <strong>Michael A&#8230;.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newswise.com\/articles\/online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Online Age Checks Create a Pointless Privacy Risk https:\/\/www.newswise.com\/articles\/online-age-checks-create-a-pointless-privacy-risk Publish Date: 2026-05-22 17:50:00 Source Domain:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/research.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/news_first_image\/public\/news-images\/Digital-ID.jpg?itok=Fdl-lxkG","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252878","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\/252878"}],"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=252878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252880,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252878\/revisions\/252880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}