UK Porn Is About to Change in a Way You're Not Going to Like – VICE (opens in new tab)

The ways listed in this article as proposals for confirming age:

>Credit card (by various): send your card details to the age verifier when prompted...

>Social media (Veridu): you authorise the age verifier to rummage through your timeline updates, your photos, friend lists, education history, all of your personal metadata and use machine learning to work out if you’re over 18.

>SMS (Verime): go to a porn site, the age verifier asks for your (UK) phone number, sends you a text...

>App (Yoti): download an app, take a photo of, say, your passport and then a selfie...

>Physical verification (AVSecure): take proof of ID to the post office...

This is beyond an age restriction effort, this is the construction of a powerful tool for intimidation. This will be abused.

Why not, for instance, require a header for the 18+ pages that can be blocked by home router? Take legal action to block or fine adult sites that don't comply within the UK. Don't track all the people all the time.

I guess this change is not very surprising, given the UK's history with the internet, but it's disappointing nonetheless.

tl;dr The company that owns a large chunk of the Tube sites out there wants to create a single interface that connects age verification systems already in place, which the British government is mandating porn sites must use. This company can also conveniently use said system in order to sell user data to "trusted third parties".

I wonder if physical pornography (magazines, DVDs, etc) will make a comeback in the UK because of these changes. Privacy-conscious consumers will see it as a discrete alternative to being tracked (and eventually one of these AgeID databases is going to be hacked)

So, time to invest in VPN services marketed towards the 13-17 year old male UK audience?