The protection of privacy and personal information on the Internet is a very important issue of our time. The Supreme Court of Canada recalled in 2014, in the famous Spencer decision, that “anonymity as a facet of the right to privacy is […] “particular importance in the context of Internet use.” Protecting our “sensitive” information online is a constant struggle.
The Special Committee on the Impacts of Screens and Social Media on Youth Health and Development began on September 12. On the agenda were several items surrounding the very broad issue of “screens and children,” including limiting minors’ access to social media (known as the “digital majority” issue). Another item that will be discussed soon is likely to be access to pornography, given the presence on Tuesday, September 24, of Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, who is leading the initiative for Bill S-210, An Act to limit young people’s online access to sexually explicit material.
Quickly, some people, in committee and in the media, expressed a strongly negative opinion on the idea of verifying the age of Internet users online. Many are thus raising an important shield: that of the possible attacks on privacy protection on the Internet if age verification were to become widespread. Moreover, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is currently conducting an exploratory consultation to give the parties the opportunity to make observations on its orientations and preliminary thoughts on this subject.
Recently, the Age Verification Providers Association hosted an event on this issue: the Global Age Assurance Standards Summit. The replay is available online, and we listened to it. To fuel the discussion on this issue, let us highlight three important observations.
First, at the first similar summit five years ago, there were only five methods of online age verification. Today, there are reportedly a dozen. Several of these methods were presented at the event. This is a sign that technology continues to evolve in this area, and that technical solutions are being developed.
Then, there is an important, and rarely emphasized, difference between verifying the age of an Internet user and verifying the identity of an Internet user (the latter being much more compromising for privacy).
Finally, ISO defines a common framework for age assurance systems (ISO/IEC CD 27566-1). This framework is currently under review and should be published in May 2025. Among its standards, clause 7 concerns performance, clause 8 privacy, clause 9 security and clause 10 social acceptability. What to remember: the technical deployment of age verification tends to be supervised and marked out to respect high standards in terms of privacy.
Why do we want to check the age of Internet users?
The reasons for considering the possibility of limiting minors’ access to certain online content are important and worrying: the increase in sexual exploitation of minors through social media platforms, violations of the protection of their personal information, and the harmful effects of pornography on their physical and mental health, to name just a few.
In this regard, a speaker at the Global Age Assurance Standards Summit recalled the following data: in a sample of 409 videos from PornHub analyzed, 45% of the scenes involved some form of physical assault. A third of searches for pornography on the Internet are for content featuring minors (using common hashtags such as ” school girls outfit “). Several online videos involve the presence of young children and animals (!).
We believe that online age verification will become an essential issue for the protection of minors in the years to come, and even, in general, for the dematerialization of our public services. It is, in this sense, imperative to encourage the development of age confirmation techniques that respect privacy.
What the United Nations thinks
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is unequivocal on this issue in paragraph 114 of theGeneral observation no 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment : “Robust age verification systems should be used to prevent children from accessing products and services whose possession or use is illegal in relation to them. These systems should be compatible with data protection and backup requirements.” According to some specialists, it would be entirely possible, among other things, by methods involving double anonymity, and the total absence of identification of the individual, to carry out this type of verification while respecting the privacy of individuals.
Would the porn industry and social media lobby like this to happen in the near future? Every child is another customer in a business model based on individual attention. They therefore have no interest in children and pre-teens no longer having access to their platforms or having limited access.
The organizer of the Global Age Assurance Standards Summit concluded with the following hypothesis: “If we could send man to the moon, we can verify the age of Internet users without revealing their identity.”
My point is this: online privacy is important, but let’s at least take the time to think about ways to verify age effectively and securely, rather than dismissing the idea altogether. It’s about children’s safety, and their most basic rights. It’s worth the effort.