With children spending increasingly more time online in the post-Covid world, parents and advocates are concerned about exposure to inappropriate content, threats and scams, driving demand for action from lawmakers.
However, because the digital realm struggles to offer the same level of protection as physical IDs for the offline world, there is an ongoing debate around effective age verification online. To address this, digital age verification measures have been proposed by government authorities including Australia, the United States, and more recently, the United Kingdom.
Surprisingly, while age verification mandates have been proposed, the plan for implementing this policy is less clear. Furthermore, there is a concerning lack of consideration for security and privacy. Privacy concerns drove policymakers in Australia to halt plans to mandate age verification on adult websites, admitting “each type of age verification or age assurance technology comes with its own privacy, security, effectiveness or implementation issues.”
From this, we can assert that user privacy must be compromised to increase online safety mechanisms. However, decentralized identity verification provides a secure and privacy-optimized solution, giving users full control over their personal information. Mass adoption of this technology would support the goals of online safety advocates while maintaining users’ privacy and the security of sensitive data.
Taking back control over personal data
One of the major concerns around mandating age verification on websites is the risk of outsourcing this task to Big Tech companies, which have a track record for abusing users’ data and lack the incentives to implement appropriate safety measures.
Monetizing user data is a massively profitable business model for Big Tech. In Q2 of 2023, for example, Facebook’s average revenue per user (ARPU) was US$10.63. Multiply this by 3.03 billion users and you’re talking tens of billions of dollars. Given the profit incentive, it is unlikely that Big Tech would be motivated to develop an age verification tool that would protect users’ privacy, even the privacy of children.
When the European Union issued a fine against Facebook for violating its privacy laws to the tail of 1.2 billion euros (US$1.26 billion), the social media giant announced days later it would be laying off 490 staff in its European headquarters — a power move to say the least.
Decentralized IDs would limit the amount of information that can be accessed by websites, government actors and Big Tech companies. Through the technology of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) built into their decentralized ID, users can verify necessary information to access a platform or certain content — like age, for example — without sharing any additional sensitive information that would traditionally be on an ID card — such as birthdate, full name, citizenship and more.