Brazil sanctions bill to protect youth online as bill covering tech progresses

Brazil’s online age verification bill, which had lingered in the lower house since 2022, is now law. Enforcement of Law No. 15.211 on protecting minors in digital environments is set to start March 17, 2025. 

The law states that “suppliers of information technology products or services that provide content, products or services whose offer or access is inappropriate, inadequate or prohibited for minors under 18 (eighteen) years of age must adopt effective measures to prevent access by children and adolescents within the scope of their services and products.” 

This can include “reliable age verification mechanisms” that are “proportionate, auditable and technically secure,” and which comply with Brazil’s General Personal Data Protection Law. Regarding regulation, “the public authority may act as a regulator, certifier or promoter of technical solutions for age verification, observing the limits of legality, privacy protection and fundamental rights provided for by law.” 

“An Act of the Executive Branch will regulate the minimum transparency, security and interoperability requirements for age verification and parental supervision mechanisms adopted by operating systems and application stores.”

The full scope of the newly sanctioned legislation is broad, with chapters covering parental supervision, social media, and digital advertising.

A separate bill, PL 3910/2025, covers platforms’ technical responsibilities to provide reliable age verification, including biometric checks, particularly for adult content platforms. 

Don’t roll dice on age verification, KYC for gambling: Didit

In Brazil and elsewhere, the explosion of online gambling platforms is driving demand for age verification products and services. A pair of posts from Didit, an identity verification firm based in Barcelona, looks at age assurance and KYC for the gambling space. 

Age verification for online gambling, it says, is “no longer a nice to have: it’s the firewall separating regulatory compliance from fines, negative headlines, and user churn.” Citing figures from the UK and Europe, where online gambling among adolescents has almost doubled since 2019, Didit says that age assurance measures offer a two-pronged benefit: “for compliance teams, robust age validation processes minimize regulatory risk; for product and growth teams, they can become a competitive advantage when executed with minimal friction.”

The trick is to ensure the friction stays minimal. Didit recommends an orchestrated flow: “age estimation as the first filter, country-specific thresholds, and a fallback to document verification for borderline cases.” This balances compliance, friction and conversion to achieve an optimal result; by using biometric age estimation as a first measure when permitted, the flow starts with the most private option.  

Didit applies the same thinking to KYC, in that it’s not optional: “age and identity must be verified before play or deposits.”

Deepfake fraud rampant in Brazil

This applies especially in Brazil. The country, says Didit, has become “the deepfake hotspot, with five times the incidence of the U.S. and ten times Germany.” Having loosened historically strict regulations on gambling at the beginning of 2025 with the launch of an extensive regulated online gambling market, it has sparked what some have called a “modern-day gambling gold rush.” A corresponding rise in fraud has come with it.

That’s why rules are so tight in so many places. Didit notes that in regulated markets like the EU, UK and U.S., “operating without KYC is not legal.” Nonetheless, holes appear in the armor, as players seek “no-KYC casinos” that don’t bother following regulations. 

“Compliance teams and founders face the same storm: fraud spikes, shifting country rules, and friction that hurts conversion,” says the post. For Didit, the message is clear: “age checks must be proportionate and auditable – but also fast so they don’t tank conversion.” Similarly, quality KYC should result in less fraud, less friction, and more conversion. 

Article Topics

age verification  |  Brazil  |  gambling  |  identity verification  |  legislation  |  social media