On-device age verification puts biometrics at the heart of security

Trust Stamp is not mincing words about the rollout of age verification laws around the world, and especially in the UK. In a release touting its Biometric Bound Credentials technology, the Atlanta-based firm says online safety laws and their attendant age assurance requirements are “collapsing under real-world pressure.”

“We are witnessing a systemic failure in real-time,” says Trust Stamp President Andrew Gowasack. “Well-intentioned laws are being rendered useless overnight because they are built on a fundamentally broken premise. You cannot verify a device or an IP address and pretend you have verified a person. The entire framework is a house of cards, and the surge in VPN use is the gust of wind that’s knocking it down.”

Trust Stamp believes that a combination of biometric bound credentials and zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs) is the way to reverse the “catastrophic failure of the current approach.” Its proprietary biometric binding technology, TrustedAge, generates a biometric key that, after a one-time verification, is permanently cryptographically locked to one user. “A live biometric capture confirms the rightful owner is present for every session, making the credential worthless to anyone else.”

Trust Stamp entered TrustedAge into the Australian Age Assurance Technology Trial (AATT), for on-device processing. The company says testing “found the technology to be suitable for deployment in the Challenge 25 policy area with a Mean Predicted Age of 18.2 against the Mean Actual Age of 17.81.”

The company believes the U.S. is in danger of following the same path as the UK, which it says has been rendered unenforceable by rampant VPN use: “a wholesale rejection of the system’s viability, proving a critical flaw: verification without biometric binding is merely security theater.”

“What we’re seeing in the UK is a preview of the chaos coming to America,” Gowasack says. “A tidal wave of similar, flawed legislation is hitting two dozen U.S. states right now. Companies are scrambling for a solution, facing a compliance nightmare with fines up to $10,000 per incident. They are about to learn the hard way that their current systems are flawed.”

Trust Stamp Chief Science Officer Dr. Norman Poh says that legacy systems that rely on simply unlocking a device are no longer sufficient. The ZKP-based approach “authenticates the user directly, instead of relying on the device as an authenticator.”

Privately poised to support Swiss age assurance market

Switzerland is among nations debating age verification, and Privately says it is ideally positioned to support age checks with privacy preserving, fully anonymous facial age estimation (FAE). A release from the Lausanne-headquartered firm notes that it already provides age estimation for retail stores across the UK, U.S. and France, preventing up to eight underage sales per store each day.

Deepak Tewari, CEO of Privately SA, says AI-based facial age estimation technology has matured faster than most regulators realize. “Recent regulatory announcements in the UK, Australia and U.S. have shown an overwhelming acceptance of age estimation technology as a means of highly effective age assurance,” Tewari says. “Switzerland has its own legislation coming shortly, and we’ve shown it is possible to protect children online and in physical settings, in a way that protects privacy and avoids the need for an intrusive ID check.”

Tewari believes most users will choose facial age estimation over an ID check. “It is quicker, smarter and a more practical solution for most use cases,” he says. “As lawmakers introduce new rules, they must fully understand the solutions already available.”

Privately also points to its product’s evaluation in the Australian Government’s recent Age Assurance Technology Trial. “Privately was the only provider offering fully on-device processing, ensuring no image or biometric data of the consumer ever leaves their devices, offering the highest data privacy guarantees in the industry.”

Building on its device-based age tools, Privately is currently testing out technology for age-gating ads and promotions in stores across Switzerland. Tewari says the tailored ads tool “opens up the possibility of compliant promotions across digital, in-store and retail media channels.”

TruSources enters the fray of on-device age checks

Fresh startup TruSources hopes on-device age verification can assuage some of the privacy and security concerns that hound age check technology. An article in TechCrunch says the company has developed a deepfake detection app and a KYC app, which can be used to verify a user’s liveness on-device in a few seconds.

TruSources’ founder and chief technology officer, Sanjay Krishnamurthy, worked on the core encryption engine at WhatsApp. He says TruSources technology relies on a custom machine learning model baked into its apps, which “detects patterns from an existing dataset that the company developed to spot deepfakes and false identity cards.”

The tool can be integrated with apps, websites and corporate single sign-on devices, and can also produce a QR code for use in physical situations. A case study on its website describes an integration with Okta.

Article Topics

age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  facial age estimation (FAE)  |  Privately  |  selfie biometrics  |  TruSources  |  Trust Stamp