Tag: digital id

FTC Says Companies Can Collect Kids’ Personal Data, As Long As It’s Called “Age Verification”

The FTC just told companies they can collect children’s personal data without parental consent, as long as it’s for “age verification.”

That’s the practical effect of a policy statement the agency issued this week. Under COPPA, websites collecting data on kids under 13 generally need verifiable parental consent first. The FTC’s new statement carves out an exception: gather whatever personal information you need to verify someone’s age, and the Commission won’t come after you for it.

The agency calls this child protection. The infrastructure it’s enabling looks different.

Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “Age verification technologies are some of the most child-protective technologies to emerge in decades,” and framed the announcement as a tool for parents.

What the statement actually does is green-light personal data collection from minors, on the theory that knowing someone’s age requires knowing who they are first.

The exemption is conditional. To avoid enforcement, sites must delete age verification data “promptly” after use, restrict third-party sharing to vendors with adequate security assurances, post clear notices about what they’re collecting, and use methods likely to produce “reasonably accurate” results. These requirements are unverifiable by the people whose data gets collected, and enforced by an agency that just announced it won’t enforce.

COPPA supposedly exists precisely because children’s personal data is sensitive and companies can’t be trusted to protect it without legal pressure.

The FTC’s new exemption uses that same sensitive data as the price of admission for age verification, then steps back from enforcement. The agency is weakening the law’s protections in order to expand the infrastructure that the law was supposedly designed to regulate.

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Apple Rolls Out Age Verification to UK iPhone Users Under Online Safety Act

Apple is now starting to demand age verification from UK iPhone users, and the latest iOS 26.4 beta makes clear what’s at stake for anyone who declines.

The move is a direct consequence of the UK’s Online Safety Act, a censorship law that has also forces platforms to check the identity/age eligibility of every adult user or face fines reaching 10% of global revenue.

The law is controversial but British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says it doesn’t go far enough.

A prompt appears after installation asking users to confirm they’re over 18. Refuse, and Apple says users “will not be able to download and purchase apps or make in-app purchases.”

The verification process gives Apple several ways to build a profile of your age. It can pull from the payment method already linked to your account, use account age as a proxy, or ask you to scan a credit card. Some users may eventually be asked to scan a photo ID. Apple frames this as seamless.

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Privacy Groups Revolt Against Google’s Demand to Register Every Android Developer

Android’s defining advantage over iOS has always been openness. You could build an app, distribute it yourself, and never touch Google’s systems. That era is about to end unless the open-source community can force Google to back down.

Starting September 2026, any app installed on a certified Android device must be registered by a Google-verified developer. No registration, no installation. The verification demands government-issued identification, agreement to Google’s terms and conditions, and a $25 fee.

Developers who skip Google’s approval process will find their apps blocked, even when distributed entirely outside Google Play, through stores like F-Droid, the Amazon Appstore, or Samsung’s Galaxy Store.

Organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, F-Droid, Article 19, Fastmail, and Vivaldi, signed an open letter calling on Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and app ecosystem chief Vijaya Kaza to kill the policy. Their message is simple: Google is reaching into distribution channels it doesn’t own, doesn’t operate, and has no legitimate authority over.

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Xbox UK Age Verification Launch Locks Out Thousands of Players

Xbox’s mandatory age verification rollout in the UK was a disaster almost immediately, locking thousands of players out of games, voice chat, and apps like Discord with no clear path back in.

The failures started overnight. Players report being ejected mid-session to complete age verification checks that then took hours, stalled indefinitely, or simply refused to work regardless of what identification they submitted.

Government ID, mobile numbers, and live video age estimation; the system rejected them all for many users. Others made it through verification only to find their accounts still restricted with no explanation and no recourse beyond contacting Xbox support.

Microsoft’s support page now carries a notice confirming it is “aware of the issue and working to fix it.” That’s the extent of the official guidance.

The verification requirement exists to comply with the UK’s new censorship law, the Online Safety Act, legislation mandating that platforms facilitating online communication verify user ages. The actual system XBox built to deliver that compliance forcibly disconnected players from games in progress, stripped away chat functionality with anyone outside their friends list, and blocked access to third-party services.

Users who have held Xbox accounts for over 18 years found themselves flagged for verification anyway. The system doesn’t consider account age, history, or any contextual signal that might indicate an adult user. Everyone gets treated as potentially underage until they hand over documentation.

“The amount of times I’ve tried to do any method of the verification tonight is stupid,” wrote one user. “Can’t change privacy settings on my Xbox to allow me to see mods on games too. Can’t chat on Discord. Utterly broken.”

“Been trying to verify my ID for the past few hours,” added another. “It finally worked but I can’t access anything still. No Discord access at all.”

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Germany’s SPD Pushes Mandatory Government ID Verification for Social Media

The SPD of Germany wants to end anonymous social media access in Germany.

Tim Klüssendorf, Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party, confirmed this week that his party is pushing mandatory age verification for all social media platforms, tied directly to the EU Digital Identity Wallet, the bloc’s official government ID scheme.

He’s already in talks with coalition partner CDU, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party, which called for an end to online anonymity just last week. Both parties now want the same thing.

Naturally, Klüssendorf framed the proposal as child protection. “We are currently not meeting the state’s obligation to protect. I believe children and young people are particularly at risk there. That has been proven,” he said after an SPD leadership meeting in Berlin.

The platforms, he added, are currently “operating a business model that is simply not compatible with our democratic principles.”

The SPD’s formal position, adopted in an internal policy paper, breaks access into three tiers by age. Under-14s would face a complete ban from social media platforms. Under-16s could access only state-approved “youth versions,” stripped of algorithmic recommendation, infinite scroll, autoplay, and engagement reward systems. For everyone 16 and older, including adults, algorithmic content recommendations would be switched off by default. Want the algorithm? You’d have to actively opt in.

The proposal sounds measured. It isn’t. Mandatory EUDI Wallet verification means linking your social media account to a government-issued digital identity before you can post, scroll, or log in.

Every platform interaction becomes traceable to a verified real-world identity. Klüssendorf acknowledged the data tension, insisting the SPD wants “a very data-minimising solution that is also in the hands of state regulation” rather than handing platforms more user data to monetize.

The EUDI Wallet architecture, at least in theory, allows age confirmation without transmitting full identity details. Whether that promise survives contact with implementation is a different question.

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LA County Sues Roblox Over False Child Safety Claims and Lack of Age Verification

Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit against Roblox, alleging the platform has built a system that leaves children exposed to grooming because it does not go far enough in checking user IDs to prove their age.

The suit names the company for public nuisance and violations of California’s false advertising law.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

The complaint is direct: “Roblox portrays its platform as a safe and appropriate place for children to play. In reality, and as Roblox well knows, the design of its platform makes children easy prey for pedophiles.”

If you weren’t aware of how big Roblox is and why this is important, Roblox serves roughly 144 million daily active users. That’s more than both Fortnite and the entire userbase of the Steam platform combined.

The platform also lets people create and play games, chat through customizable avatars, and spend real money on virtual currency.

LA County’s suit argues Roblox has consistently failed to moderate user-generated content, enforce its own age restrictions, or honestly disclose the risks predators pose to children using the service.

There is no doubt the platform’s moderation gaps have attracted scrutiny for years, and that the platform has had issues with grooming of minors, but the LA lawsuit is the latest in a pattern of governments and researchers documenting the same problem Roblox has repeatedly said it’s addressing, and the latest attempt to mandate digital ID checks.

Roblox rejected the suit’s allegations. A company spokesman said the platform was built “with safety at its core” and pointed to existing protections: “We have advanced safeguards that monitor our platform for harmful content and communications, and users cannot send or receive images via chat, avoiding one of the most prevalent opportunities for misuse seen elsewhere online.”

The company added that it takes action against rule violators and cooperates with law enforcement, closing with: “There is no finish line when it comes to protecting kids and, while no system can be perfect, our commitment to safety never ends.”

The false advertising angle is what is most important to note. LA isn’t suing Roblox over what it collects or who can see it. The county is suing because the company told parents the platform was safe for kids while allegedly knowing otherwise.

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40 Attorneys General Urge Congress to ‘Tie Online Access to ID’

Forty state attorneys general (AGs) last week urged federal lawmakers to pass a bill that could ultimately require people to digitally verify their identity to access the internet, according to privacy and free speech watchdog group Reclaim The Net.

In a Feb. 10 letter, the AGs backed the U.S. Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act. They did not support the U.S. House of Representatives version, which differs in key ways.

If passed, the Senate bill would require government officials and agencies to figure out how computers, cellphones and operating systems could verify people’s age. The bill states:

“The Secretary of Commerce, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, shall conduct a study evaluating the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.”

The federal officials and agencies would be required to submit a report of their findings to Congress within a year.

Designing cellphones and computer operating systems to verify a user’s age would bring the U.S. another step closer to cementing a digital ID system, Reclaim The Net reported. In an article titled “40 State Attorneys General Want To Tie Online Access to ID,” it wrote:

“Device-level verification would likely depend on digital identity checks tied to government-issued identification, third-party age verification vendors, or persistent account authentication systems. …

“… Once age checks are embedded at the operating system level, the boundary between verifying age and verifying identity becomes difficult to maintain.”

Greg Glaser, a digital privacy expert and attorney, agreed. “By embedding identity checks into apps, hardware, or operating systems, the bill would create a de facto digital ID checkpoint for broad internet use,” he said.

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From Blockchain To Ball-And-Chain: Are We Being Borg’d?

Tokenized Tyranny: How Elites Are Digitizing Our World for Total Control

I’ve followed investigative journalist Whitney Webb’s work for years, and her once-distant warnings now feel eerily prophetic as they unfold in real time. What she has consistently exposed, the systematic digitization and commodification of everything from natural ecosystems to human life itself, is no longer speculative theory. It’s happening before our eyes.

When I first encountered Whitney’s reporting, I found it hard to believe. Could this level of control and financialization truly be underway? It seemed too dystopian, too extreme. Yet after digging deeper the evidence was undeniable. What she described was not exaggeration. It was an accurate and meticulously documented reality.

The tokenization of nature and humanity represents a deliberate strategy by the world’s most powerful financial institutions. Figures like BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO Larry Fink have openly championed turning the planet’s resources, and increasingly aspects of human existence, into fractionalized, tradable digital assets on blockchain-based ledgers. This creates new avenues for elite profit and unprecedented surveillance and control.

With Fink now serving as Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees (alongside André Hoffmann), the technocratic elite have gained an ideal global platform to accelerate this agenda. What better forum than the WEF to mainstream and fast-track “total control” from cradle to grave.

The process begins with assigning unique digital identifiers to virtually everything: land, water, forests, carbon credits, even personal behaviors and biological data. These are then logged on universal ledgers, where ownership is sliced into tradable fractions, much like stocks. But this goes far beyond traditional finance. It encompasses the Earth’s finite resources and, ultimately, the very essence of human life, all reduced to programmable, monetizable units in a centralized system of power.

This is tokenized tyranny in action: a quiet revolution that could redefine ownership, freedom, and existence itself..

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40 State Attorneys General Want To Tie Online Access to ID

A bloc of 40 state and territorial attorneys general is urging Congress to adopt the Senate’s version of the controversial Kids Online Safety Act, positioning it as the stronger regulatory instrument and rejecting the House companion as insufficient.

The Act would kill online anonymity and tie online activity and speech to a real-world identity.

Acting through the National Association of Attorneys General, the coalition sent a letter to congressional leadership endorsing S. 1748 and opposing H.R. 6484.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Their request centers on structural differences between the bills. The Senate proposal would create a federally enforceable “Duty of Care” requiring covered platforms to mitigate defined harms to minors.

Enforcement authority would rest with the Federal Trade Commission, which could investigate and sue companies that fail to prevent minors from encountering content deemed to cause “harm to minors.”

That framework would require regulators to evaluate internal content moderation systems, recommendation algorithms, and safety controls.

S. 1748 also directs the Secretary of Commerce, the FTC, and the Federal Communications Commission to study “the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.”

This language moves beyond platform-level age gates and toward infrastructure embedded directly into hardware or operating systems.

Age verification at that layer would not function without some form of credentialing. Device-level verification would likely depend on digital identity checks tied to government-issued identification, third-party age verification vendors, or persistent account authentication systems.

That means users could be required to submit identifying information before accessing broad categories of lawful online speech. Anonymous browsing depends on the ability to access content without linking identity credentials to activity.

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UK Fines US Platform Imgur For Lack of Age Verification

Imgur’s decision to suspend access for UK users in September 2025 was an early signal that regulatory pressure was building. The platform’s parent company has now learned the financial cost of that pressure.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has fined MediaLab, which operates image hosting company Imgur, £247,590 ($337,000) for violations of the UK GDPR.

According to the regulator, the company processed children’s personal data without a lawful basis, failed to implement effective age assurance measures, and did not complete a required data protection impact assessment.

The ICO’s findings focus on how children under 13 were able to use the service without verified parental consent or “any other lawful basis.”

The regulator also determined that the company lacked meaningful age checks. That means the platform did not reliably verify whether users were children before collecting and processing their data. Additionally, MediaLab did not conduct a formal risk assessment to examine how its service might affect minors’ rights and freedoms.

“MediaLab failed in its legal duties to protect children, putting them at unnecessary risk,” said UK Information Commissioner John Edwards. “For years, it allowed children to use Imgur without any effective age checks, while collecting and processing their data, which in turn exposed them to harmful and inappropriate content. Age checks help organizations keep children’s personal information safe.”

He added, “Ignoring the fact that children use these services, while processing their data unlawfully, is not acceptable. Companies that choose to ignore this can expect to face similar enforcement action.”

The ICO says it has the authority to impose fines of up to £17.5 million or 4 percent of an organization’s annual global revenue, whichever is higher. In setting the penalty at £247,590, the office stated that it “took into consideration the number of children affected by this breach, the degree of potential harm caused, the duration of the contraventions, and the company’s global turnover.”

This enforcement action sits within a broader UK policy change toward mandatory online age verification.

Lawmakers and regulators have increasingly pressed platforms to deploy age assurance tools that can include document checks, facial age estimation, or third-party verification services. All-privacy invasive.

While positioned as child protection measures, these systems often require users to submit government-issued identification or biometric data simply to access online services.

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