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Driving Change: The Human Costs of Online Age Verification.

Monitoring IP Address Biometric Data Data Breaches Human Resources Scientific Research
Jan 6, 2026
Summary

Age verification requirements are rapidly spreading, ushering in a new era of online surveillance, censorship, and exclusion, not just for young people, but for everyone. Laws that mandate age verification typically require websites and apps to collect sensitive data from every user, often through intrusive methods such as identity checks, biometric scans, or other questionable "estimation techniques," before granting access to certain content or services. Legislators often tout these laws as the ultimate solution for "child online safety."

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Full text

The requirements for age verification are spreading rapidly, ushering in a new era of online surveillance, censorship, and exclusion, not only for young people, but for everyone. Laws that mandate age verification typically require websites and apps to collect sensitive data from every user, often through intrusive methods such as identity checks, biometric scans, or other questionable "estimation techniques," before granting access to certain content or services. While lawmakers tout these laws as the ultimate solution for "child online safety," in reality, age verification requirements create barriers for large portions of the internet, build a vast new infrastructure for surveillance, increase the risk of data breaches and actual privacy violations, and threaten the anonymity that has long allowed people to seek support, explore new ideas, and form and organize online communities.

Join EFF's Rindala Alajaji and Alexis Hancock, along with Hana Memon from Gen-Z for Change and Cynthia Conti-Cook from the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience for a joint...

This content has been automatically translated using machine translation. The original version is available in the source language.

This content was automatically translated using machine translation. The original version is available in the source language.

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