Age assurance
Articles
Nov 06, 2023
Facial age estimation: the facts
We developed facial age estimation to give everyone a secure and private way to prove their age, without sharing their name or any identity documents. We also wanted to address the inclusion issue, given not everyone has an ID – which can exclude them from accessing age-restricted goods, services and experiences. The technology can determine a person’s age from a facial image. We believe this is a better way to check someone’s age. People shouldn’t have to share their whole identity just to prove their age. We work hard to explain facial age estimation and how it works. Unfortunately, some
Articles
Oct 26, 2023
Online Safety Act becomes law
After years of debate and discussion, the Online Safety Act is now law – marking a new chapter in online safety. There are three key elements within the Online Safety Act that we are ready to help with: Age assurance to help platforms create safe, age-appropriate experiences online User verification to give users more control over who they interact with online Over 18 consent from content creators for the publication of intimate images Age assurance in the Online Safety Act The Online Safety Act is not about excluding children from the internet. It’s about giving them an experience
Articles
Oct 25, 2023
Offering choice in age assurance methods
New regulations are being introduced that require platforms to create age-appropriate experiences. These include the UK’s Online Safety Bill, the EU’s Better Internet for Kids strategy and country-specific Children’s Codes. These regulations aim to help young people thrive online by ensuring they are only exposed to age-appropriate content. It ensures that only adults can access certain goods, services and experiences or enter legal contracts. It also means that adults are kept out of spaces designed exclusively for children. To do this, platforms need to check the ages of their users so that they can design their sites accordingly. How
Articles
Oct 10, 2023
Exploring bias in credit card-based age verification
We publish the accuracy rates of our facial age estimation technology, split by gender, age and skin tone. By being open and transparent, we hope to give businesses and users confidence in the technology. We also hope this helps regulators to fairly review facial age estimation as an effective age assurance method. However whilst evaluating facial age estimation, some stakeholders and regulators overlook the drawbacks and bias shown in other age assurance approaches. Bias and limitations of using credit cards for age verification One age check method approved in many countries is asking adults to use a credit card
Articles
Sep 14, 2023
Age assurance: What makes for the maturity of a technology or an industry?
Last week, the Australian government decided against the eSafety Commissioner’s recommendation of a pilot before requiring adult sites to verify the ages of visitors. They said this was due to concerns about the privacy of people’s data and the maturity of age assurance technology. So what exactly would constitute a mature technology? Is it something comparable to NASA’s Technology Readiness level? This suggests the technology needs to have gone through a thorough process of research and prototyping, before testing in a live environment and then ultimately rolling it out. If that’s the case, we can say that Yoti and other
Articles
Sep 12, 2023
Understanding age assurance in the Online Safety Act
The Online Safety Act 2023 is a piece of UK legislation that aims to protect children and adults online. It covers a wide range of issues including minimising the risk of children seeing harmful and age-inappropriate content, removing illegal content like child sexual abuse material (CSAM), criminalising fraudulent and scam ads, and introducing age verification for certain online services. This blog looks at some of the age requirements in the Online Safety Act and what this means for tech companies, adult sites, gaming companies, social media platforms and dating sites. What is the purpose of the Online Safety Act 2023?