Australia clarifies online age check expectations with regulatory guidance

Guidance has been issued by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner to help social media platforms meet their regulatory obligations ahead of the December 10 deadline for age restrictions.

The guidance explains how online platforms should deploy age assurance technologies, drawing on input from industry engagements, public consultation and the Age Assurance Technology Trial, which was capped off with a final report earlier this month.

Online platforms are advised to match the technology they choose to their specific needs, as “there is no one-size-fits-all solution,” and to layer systems, technologies, policies and communication to achieve compliance. Age verification is not required, and the announcement acknowledges that “Blanket age verification may be considered unreasonable, especially if existing data can infer age reliably.”

Beyond that, platforms cannot offer only age verification with a government-issued ID document.

The guidance clarifies that audit records should retain data on systems and processes, not “personal information from individual age checks.”

ConnectID Managing Director Andrew Black noted the emphasis on choice and transparency in the guidance in an email to Biometric Update.

“The guidance and the earlier Age Assurance Technology Trial both make clear that age assurance can be done with privacy-first tools that already exist,” Black says. “Digital identity solutions like ConnectID, assessed in the government’s trial report at the highest technology readiness level, have shown that platforms can receive a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response to confirm whether a user is over or under 16, without needing to see or store any personal information – not even a date of birth.

“The less data exposed, the safer everyone is,” he adds.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant notes that many businesses already use signals like behavioral data and natural language analysis to estimate their users’ ages, and that they can turn those systems to compliance, so long as they use the data in a privacy-preserving way.

Platforms are expected to continuously monitor the effectiveness of their systems, and provide accessible review mechanisms people can turn to if their age is incorrectly assessed.

“By taking a layered or ‘waterfall’ approach, applying different measures across the user experience, including accessible and timely review mechanisms, platforms can manage the risks associated with any errors in age inference or estimation,” says Inman Grant.

The 55-page guidance document addresses a range of related issues, from buffer thresholds for age estimation or inference to the need for biometric liveness detection when using facial age estimation, and how kids under 16 may attempt to circumvent age restrictions.

Implementation advances

Australia’s online safety regulator has also published a “Statement of Commitment to Children’s Rights” as part of its implementation of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act.

The document states eSafety’s intention “to take a children’s rights approach to implementation,” based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It also outlines a program of engagement with Australia’s states and territories, children, parents and educators.

eSafety is also claiming success in an engagement with Roblox, with the online game popular among children committing to implement a set of new safety measures by the end of the year. Some chat features will be disabled by default until the user has gone through age estimation.

Kids estimated to be under 16 years old who have turned on chat functions will be unable to chat with adults. The changes follow and build on an expansion of facial age estimation provided by Persona that Roblox announced last week.

Inman Grant also registered a set of new industry codes last week that will require sites with pornographic content to implement age assurance measures by March of next year.

Article Topics

age inference  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  eSafety Commissioner  |  Online Safety Act (Australia)