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Apple Now Requires Device-Level Age Verification in the UK. Could the US Be Next? (gizmodo.com) 118

Posted by EditorDavid from the ages-of-empires dept.
Apple unveiled new device-level age restrictions in the UK on Wednesday. "After downloading a new update, users will now have to confirm that they are 18 or older to access unrestricted features," reports Gizmodo.

"Users will be able to confirm their age with a credit card or by scanning an ID." For those underage or who have not confirmed their age, Apple will turn on Web Content Filter and Communication Safety, which will not only restrict access to certain apps or websites, but will also monitor messages, shared photo albums, AirDrop, and FaceTime calls for nudity. Apple didn't specify exactly which services and features are banned for under-18 users, but it will likely be in compliance with UK legislation...

The British government does not require Apple and other OS providers to institute device-level age checks, but it does restrict minor access to online pornography under the Online Safety Act, which passed in 2023. So far, that restriction has only been implemented at the website level, but UK officials have been worried about easy loopholes to evade the age restrictions, like VPNs.

The broader tech industry has been campaigning for some time to use device-level age checks instead in response to the rising tide of under-16 social media and internet bans around the world. Last month, in a landmark social media trial in California, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also supported this idea, saying that conducting age verification "at the level of the phone is just a lot clearer than having every single app out there have to do this separately." Pornhub-operator Aylo had advocated for device-level restrictions in the UK as well, and even sent out letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft in November asking for OS-level age verification...

The most obvious question: Could this be brought stateside?

Apple Now Requires Device-Level Age Verification in the UK. Could the US Be Next? More | Reply

Apple Now Requires Device-Level Age Verification in the UK. Could the US Be Next?

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  • It's mandatory for them because there is so much AI slop now it's starting to infect their data sets. Facebook doesn't give a shit about the quality of their advertising because no matter how many bots there are people keep buying the ads. But the advertising is only about 1/3 of their revenue 2/3 of it is selling data to brokers and law enforcement.

    There is so much AI slop and it is so sophisticated it's becoming difficult to keep it out of their data sets and that's gradually making the data sets usel

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      While I am not convinced that is the real reason, it would make a lot of sense if it was.

      • You will find that every single one of those age gate laws was written by a lobbying firm tied to Facebook.

        There is no question that the age restriction laws are coming from facebook. Also Planitir. They are also behind some of the funding for lobbying for the laws. They use what's called template laws where they write a legal template that can be sent across the country to form the basis of laws that pass everywhere.

        No we don't exactly know why. But it doesn't take a lot to figure out. It doesn't r

    • I think it's more along the lines that big social media realizes they're going to get their ass handed to them in court (for being perceived as harmful to children) without some sort of age gate to keep the kids out.

      Sure, Facebook technically could just ask for your credit card when you sign up, but a lot of people aren't willing to trust Zuck with their billing details. Pushing it off on Apple/Microsoft/Google means users have already gone over that speedbump before deciding to use Facebook. You already

      • "Perceived" , its 100% real.
        Think of all the dumb stuff you did as a kid.... now think about how, if it was all recorded and never went away, it stuck with you for life..... how F'd up would YOUR life be now ?

        The world already look at the USA as being insane....school shootings..... to the USA this is so normal no one will or wants to do anything about it except "Thoughts and Prayers", meanwhile guns are the number 1 killer of kids in the USA.
        That is so F'd up
        So they are learning right from primary
      • About losing those lawsuits. They can absorb the fines and work around them. After a little bit of finagling the dollar amounts involved will not be terribly large. But on the other hand, and they have called this out in their sec filings, this basically makes it borderline impossible for any competitor to go up against them. In the long run it's probably going to save them money because traditionally the way they survive is by buying up whichever competitor of theirs the kids under 15 flocked to in order t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          Amazing how Mr. Regulations, suddenly gets it when "wrong people" people are able to use them to obtain a barrier to entry.

          Yet regulations are never a problem, when small shops are threatening to out compete big union controlled entities, private schools make public education officalls running indoctrination mills look like clowns, etc.

          No infringement on the rights or property of adults is to great if it advances your Bolshevik agenda; but when government actually steps in to protect people who actually are

    • Re:Facebook and other billionaires are pushing it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sit1963nz ( 934837 ) on Sunday March 29, 2026 @03:53PM (#66067744)
      Complete BS and paranoia.
      They KNOW their product is addictive, especially to kids whose brains are still developing. Giving them Dopamine hit triggers the pleasure centres of the brain, effectively making them drug addicts , supplied by Social media.

      The last think they want is kids without social media, and reaching an age where they have been taught critical thinking, how social and other media works, how sales pitches work, different kinds of addictions, bullying, blackmail, sexual extortion, No means NO, etc etc etc. They will be taught the mental health benefits of face to face social interaction
      Social media already knows who you are, they probably know more about you than your family.
      They buy and sell information about you from all sources, cellphone tracking, credit card purchases , services you have (internet, power, gas, phone, Netflix etc
      Kids have exactly ONE chance to grow up into healthy adults, ones who will have productive lives. If THEY fail, you old age is going to be horrific , poverty, ill health, no services etc etc.

      I am 100% selfish, I want ever kid born today to be working so that my retirement is as good as it can be.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      Don't shove AI in everything.

      The companies are pushing it, because they want money and data. If a small site like Slashdot would have to adopt age verification, they would implement the age-verification service provided by some of the companies, that the company is offering for free for some reason. The company then gets user data and the association of the user to Slashdot. They are just getting more user data, including verified IDs. Advertisers like when users are not only verified to be a human but also

    • Knowing who is human would not stop AI slop. People copy and paste AI slop. This is just another step in the sudden storm taking away internet anonymity. The west has been envying China's level of citizen control too long, figures it's time to level up. Before long the free internet is going to be led by Edgar Friendly.
    • Not sure this makes a lot of sense, what prevents anyone from posting AI slop using a verified age or even ID? They are rather working with governments that more and more are making certain opinions punishable by law, then quick and effective ID of the user makes prosecution or fining a lot cheaper. Sooner rather than later it will be hard to say "from the river to the sea" or "no kings" without being charged with hate speech and treason respectively.
    • Or...easy solution, tried and true, age old.....don't use Facebook or any of those other social median apps.

      We got along just fine before them....and I can tell you from experience....never being on them, hasn't harmed me a bit, in fact I think it overall has had a positive effect on my life....

  • Will, not could, come to the USA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Sunday March 29, 2026 @11:41AM (#66067466) Homepage

    A large number of states, including California, Colorado, Illinois and New York, have already passed or are passing stupid device age-attestation laws like this one [ca.gov]. These laws purport to apply to just about any OS on any general-purpose computing device, if the device is capable of downloading software. If the laws are not fought, it means open-source is in trouble and mass surveillance will become the norm.

    • Wait!? (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Didn't we just have a No Kings day?

      • Didn't we just have a No Kings day?

        Oops. [twitter.com]

      • Didn't we just have a No Kings day?

        The UK actually has a king, by design; the US not so much.

        • They have Oligarchs instead.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          The UK has a head of state (a king) they've spent a thousand years learning should stand around a look pretty with medals and things but that's about it. The US has a head of state (a president) they've spent at least the last hundred years turning into a cult of personality and giving more and more power to.

          France has spent a few hundred years violently oscillating back and forth between the two. They've demonstrated it doesn't really matter whether you call it a king or a president, it's how much power yo

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by PPH ( 736903 )

            They've demonstrated it doesn't really matter whether you call it a king or a president, it's how much power you give them.

            There's an object lesson here for all the people who have been pushing for the mommy government. Sometimes you get an assole, abusive trailer park mommy.

      • We did! And as of a few seconds ago, we still have a president, so mission accomplished! Well done!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      It's not hard to create and remain anonymous by creating some sort of token client-side. Keeping it from getting stolen and used by technical kids is the challenge. Suddenly, techie friends become your best friend in high school because they know how to hack your phone.

    • You beat me to it. There is no reason Apple would want to pass over these markets, if they already support that feature for another country

    • Mass surveillance is already the norm.
      You allowed it to get free stuff on the internet, YOU became the product.
      Even the 3 letter spaghetti agencies are buying data on the open market
    • Mass surveillance is the norm: The problem is, every mum-n-dad shop is doing it. Moving the responsibility to rich people/corporations, means less identity theft and grifting. It means, online victims have an easy-to-find culprit they can punish. The current problem is, there's no service for the OS to link to and depend on. That affects the accuracy of the solution and thus, the ability of big corporations to obey the law. Also, for some reason, it allows the excuse, that an unknown implementation is

    • and mass surveillance will become the norm

      If you didn't know mass surveillance was coming since the 1970s, you were not very imaginative and didn't understand human psychology.

      Mass surveillance is occurring right now, it will continue to occur, and it will increase. There is no stopping it. Humans want to know about other humans and they want to control and bully other humans. No matter who gets near the surveillance apparatus, they will be corrupted by its power. The One Ring indeed.

  • ownership (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tiananmen tank man ( 979067 )

    you only have a license to use your iPhone, when you clicked agree.

  • Anyone can click yes a question, or put in a fake birthdate. Scanning a drivers license would work, but not everyone has a license and using someone else's or a fake one (depending on if it uses a barcode) is pretty easy. So, how do you really effectively?

    • It's not like that's a new exploit. Underagers have been getting people to buy cigarettes and booze for them for as long as there's been age check laws. No laws have perfect compliance, except maybe the law of gravity.

      • It's not like that's a new exploit. Underagers have been getting people to buy cigarettes and booze for them for as long as there's been age check laws. No laws have perfect compliance, except maybe the law of gravity.

        Yup. I know teachers whose districts have all sorts of "safety" controls in place for computers the kids use; all that does is make it harder for teachers to go to sites they use and are approved while the kids access porn and anything else they want. The stupid get caught, like the one that thought it was a good idea to print the porn on the schools printer...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Getting an adult to physically break the law for you carries risks for them, and that person stands to face consequences for doing so. A lot of people won't be willing to do it.
        Doing it yourself (eg by borrowing an id) carries very little risk.

    • Good question. I suspect that this "feature" is a CYA, so that if little Johnny enters his age as 27 and law enforcement later discovers that he is actually 12, then Apple or MS or the Linux companies who are implementing this can say that their system does require age, and that the customer lied. In that case, the legal jeopardy will be on Johnny, or his parents

      I doubt that any Operating System company would want the burden of verifying one's age. The government would have to make owning a computer a

    • I foresee a new black market for ID cards or cloned debit cards that are used against an account with no money for the sole purpose of fake age verification.

      Meanwhile scammers will now have a new path to hack into for their scams to drain your bank accounts.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        If it's just a picture of an ID card it doesn't even need to be a very good fake. You can find a picture online of someone else's ID, or you can take one from your parents, scan it and put it back before they notice it was missing.
        Same thing with a credit card, if you're not actually charging an amount parents are unlikely to notice if it was used unless they get an instant notification which still doesn't happen with all card issuers.

  • Time to pick up a used Google Pixel and replace the OS with something open source. I only target the Pixel because there are more compatible open source OSes than on other systems, at least as far as I know. Do people think they (deliberately vague) could get away with ultimately requiring that the phone OS be certified to have implemented Age Verification(tm), and mandate that the carriers not interact with systems that are not running a certified system?

    • I guess if that's the hill you want to die on. If you read the article, it's not even going to age check users where Apple already reasonably knows the account belongs to an adult. I'm fairly certain I made my Apple account around when the 3rd gen iPod was released, so that'd be back in 2003. I also have an Apple Card, which they already needed more information than just the fact that I'm a middle-aged adult in order to approve me.

      So, if this comes here, I'll literally have to do absolutely nothing to be

      • Re:Google Pixel (Score:4, Interesting)

        by unixisc ( 2429386 ) on Sunday March 29, 2026 @02:29PM (#66067664)

        Yeah, this law is more about getting rid of online anonymity than ensuring that kids are not online. For the latter, parents are already responsible for that, and it's up to them to ensure that their kids don't live on their phones or computers. Only point in passing such a law is so that one can trace who posts what online, particularly if one is stupid enough to use their subscription accounts to access social media

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        I had forgotten that Apple Card was even a thing because it's so fucking stupid.

        • I had forgotten that Apple Card was even a thing because it's so fucking stupid.

          Why do you think it is stupid?

          I like it...I get cash back on purchases, it gives me on central place to readily check what I've charged each month (THIS is big for me, easy to track and manage budget)....and I get 3% off and 12 mos interest free on Apple purchases....

          I pretty much only use one other card...my Costco Visa that gives me cash back on gas (5% at Costco pumps, 4% others )...and cash back on Costco purchases, which

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

            Because all credit cards are stupid. The entire concept of buying on credit is stupid. Cashback, while seemingly nice, is ultimately a scam that ends up leading to higher product prices.

            If I ran a business, it would be cash or debit only. No paper checks. No credit cards. I wouldn't pay the credit companies' ridiculous processing fees.

            • I pay mine off all in full at EOM....seems a nice way to get some perks, convenience and some cash back....

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

                Perks that are paid for by the ridiculous processing fees they force on the merchant - which, again, raises prices for everyone. Because why would the merchant just eat the fee?

            • Because all credit cards are stupid. The entire concept of buying on credit is stupid.

              "Credit card" is not the same as "buying on credit" (which can be done without a credit card). For those with sufficient means, who pay off their credit-card balance every billing cycle, it's just a free loan. And there are some merchants who won't accept cash -- it increases their risk of theft and takes time to count. (And some "cashiers" are unable to do arithmetic well enough to make change.)

              There are also some people who have no alternative to buying on credit. Maybe they need a car repair in order t

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

                "Credit card" is not the same as "buying on credit" (which can be done without a credit card).

                Wrong. Credit card is literally the same as buying on credit but buying on credit is not the same as using a credit card.

                Either way the entire concept is still fucking stupid because capitalism in general is stupid. I don't give a flying fuck that the practice goes back over 3000 years. It's a stupid practice for a stupid system. Loans shouldn't have to exist at all.

    • Time to pick up a used Google Pixel and replace the OS

      I fear the workaround is temporary. Apple limiting the access to apps like Tinder is only a step. Later after Google follows, app makers (casinos/dating) will request an API and then restrict their functionalities to age-verified devices. Then a phone flashed with Lineage/GrapheneOS will be useless for those apps.

      • I don't think dating and casino apps are the best examples, because any app where you're going to be providing billing information already has a de facto age gate in place.

    • GrapheneOS has announced that it is not going to comply w/ this age verification law. So if one has an Android phone that's supported, GrapheneOS can be installed on it, and then one can enjoy one's phone experience w/o Google's espionage ecosystem

  • When credit cards and bank accounts are given to children, a parent signature is required. If phones and ISP's are paid for through such venues, then they are automatically age-checked. If a parent is allowing a child to use a device the parent pays for, they should be required to opt in the device to allow the child to access mature material.

    • That's already there in most OSs, where it gives parents the power to control what their kids can download, the number of hours a day they can use it and so on. These laws are just to control the adult population!

    • Oh cute, you still live in a country that uses signatures, so quaint.

  • Laws. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Sunday March 29, 2026 @12:22PM (#66067510)
    Instead of laws, how about parents take responsibility for parenting?

  • The most obvious question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Sunday March 29, 2026 @12:29PM (#66067520)

    Does it work?
    Kids are smart and really good at finding workarounds
    The likely outcome is political theater, where politicians claim success while kids get creative
    The other likely outcome is annoyance and failure when the tech goes wrong

    • Does it work?

      The Christmas before last, I was over at my partner's relative's place to see his family. One of his teenage nephews asked me if there was a way to get a fantasy football app onto his iPhone because the rest of their family wanted him to join in. Turns out that since the phone was set up with parental controls by an aunt who'd given him the phone, there was no workaround I could think of that would allow the app to be installed. Even adding a second Apple account to the device wouldn't allow the app to d

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sit1963nz ( 934837 )
      Does any law work then ?
      The USA has the largest adult population in the world behind bars
      1% of its adult population, another 3-4 % on probation or other legal monitoring.

      Shooting kids is the Number 1 reason kids die in the USA.... do those laws work ?
      The murder rate etc is so much higher in the USA than other 1st world countries it's not funny.
      What's the difference.... gun control laws, mental healthcare, social safety nets, universal healthcare, good education, etc etc etc all things the USA has

      • Shooting kids is the Number 1 reason kids die in the USA.... do those laws work ?

        Oh please...this stat just is bogus.

        They took the ages up past 19yrs old, I believe to 20yrs....

        Legally you're adult at 18...so immediately that should be cut out of the mix, but also with ages 17-19...you're going to start counting heavily on the gang bangers who are criminals into drugs and drug wars...

        Those are NOT children...they are criminal who more and more are being charged as adults.

        If you took what most people co

        • ROTFLMAO, you think the agreement range somehow makes it better ?
          But its 1-19
          https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]

          I DONT live in the USA, I live in a real democracy, with gun control, with universal health, with social safety nets, etc etc etc, not perfect, but its a damn sight better than the USA.

          When the US works out that US laws etc end at the US boarder the world will become a safer place.
          The US did NOT win WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam , Afghanistan, Iran, etc etc etc, that is false history taught t
          • LOL...you seem reallly bent up about this.

            Out of curiosity, what utopia do you live in pray tell?

            • I am a Kiwi.
              NZ is NOT perfect, we have our issues just like any other country, but we are a better than the USA. for most social metrics

              As for being bent out of shape about hurting kids, yeah you should be too.
              They can not defend themselves
              They did not choose who their parents are, what race, religion, gender, place of birth etc etc etc they would be born into.

    • Does it work?

      Obviously - look at the laws in the 80s and 90s to prevent teenagers from getting access to tobacco, alcohol, dirty magazines and movies... we all know that parents and grandparents of today's teens didn't do any of those things growing up, right?

  • Device level will not work (Score:3)

    by Frissysan ( 659257 ) on Sunday March 29, 2026 @12:57PM (#66067568) Homepage
    I suppose it could work for a phone, but other devices can have multiple users. It would be much better done at the account level.
    • This is very true. At the same time, what age do I put for system accounts which don't allow logins?

      • This is very true. At the same time, what age do I put for system accounts which don't allow logins?

        Presumably, the sysadmin's age. If literally no one can log in, you are having a bad problem and will not go to space today.

      • Yeah, FreeDOS has already said that they can't implement this, and won't! There is no concept of "logging into" DOS: after it goes through the POST and BIOS routines, one ultimately gets to the C:\ prompt. Then it's up to one to type whatever commands one needs to

        I do wonder about MS-DOS though? Yeah, Microsoft no longer sells it, but they recently open-sourced it under the MIT license. So anybody who decides to take that source code, compile it and then use it as their OS would have the same thing as

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        1970/01/01

    • Phones can have multiple users also, either by allowing them to be physically shared or by creating multiple user accounts [google.com].

  • There must be a reason both Orwellian nightmares and V for Vendetta were essentially set in the UK written by UK authors.. they knew something too many people seem to have averted their eyes from for too long, and now here we are - the dystopian nightmares becoming reality, one salami slice and boiled frog at a time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      There must be a reason both Orwellian nightmares and V for Vendetta were essentially set in the UK written by UK authors.. they knew something too many people seem to have averted their eyes from for too long, and now here we are - the dystopian nightmares becoming reality, one salami slice and boiled frog at a time.

      It's because in both of those worlds, the US was effectively destroyed. In Nineteen Eighty-Four it was part of the same nation as the UK (Oceana) and in V for Vendetta, it was destroyed by infighting. The UK is presumed stable enough to survive cataclysmic events. The US is presently demonstrating it really isn't and is far more Orwellian than the UK's worst nightmare. I can still criticise the UK leader, Kier Starmer (yes I can, Joe Rogan was talking complete bollocks as per usual), hows that working with

  • The eventual goal is zero anonymity (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    THEY want to track and hold you accountable for everything you say.

    • THEY want to track and hold you accountable for everything you say.

      Good. THEY will be held accountable for every vote they don't get as a result.

      Then THEY won't fucking matter, because THEY will instantly become one of US.

  • It is always the first to violate everyones privacy and has beem a mass surveillance nightmare for a long time now
    • And yet their crime rate is lower, the education system is better, the healthcare system it better, they don't have school shootings, the people are more relaxed.

      Plenty of you tube videos of Americans who shifted and will never go back to the USA hellhole.

  • That is the entire problem with computing as it has evolved over the years. In the early days of computing, computer code was meant to enable the owner. Laws are and always have been sufficient to punish people from breaking the law without needing tech specific versions of many laws. The code that came out of those eras was meant to enable you to do things. Things that did not work, did not work because it was an oversight or just not a planned feature. There was never any code to make something NOT work b

    • The idea that the user knows best was idealistic and from a time when the majority of people who used computers were technology enthusiasts. Nowadays, the bulk of people using connected devices just want to scroll through social media, take pictures of their kids/pets, and don't understand why they shouldn't click the link claiming their driver's license is about to be revoked for unpaid traffic tickets.

      From the perspective of people who aren't interested in the inner workings of technology, software that

  • I said something like this on a related thread, it still applies. That discussion was about the laws passed in the USA.
    Any OS or distribution refusing to comply with these laws is protecting children.
    Any OS, app, or site that uses this age flag permits predators a quick and easy “here is a juvenile target” indicator to home in on. This is like spreading blood in shark waters!

    The developers or publishers of these open source Operating Systems have decided to not implement Age Verification, or are

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Tell me how you're ever going to implement this on any open-source operating system ever?

      Because people will just patch it out.

      It's not like it's even a boot-time requirement (thus necessitating it being in the kernel/initrd, etc.). It's an account requirement. Which means that it can be patched out in no time at all.

      As far as I know, not one single open-source OS has actually implemented this requirement (they put a field that would be useful for it into systemd, but nobody's actually using it).

  • I guess phones with open source OSses without this restriction will become more popular from now on. OS level age restriction is really an abomination of a law, any politician even suggesting it should be hanged and shot at the spot.
  • If your Apple account was created more than 18 years ago - as mine was - no proof of age is required.

  • So if this is implemented, half the US population will not be able to use ANY computer / phone ever, right ?

    The half that democrats claim doesn't have any ID to show at voting booths

    • They aren't trying to require ID. They are trying to require either a passport or birth certificate. A lot of people don't have a passport, and a large percentage of the population does not have a birth certificate readily available. It takes money and time to get a replacement copy, and even if everyone requests one in time local agencies will be flooded such that the delay will cause them to be unable to vote. It is already well known that the way things have been done for many decades works just fine,

  • The kids will just borrow dad's credit card at night, like they borrowed their adult video store cards to rent porn in the days.

  • Because technofeudal overlords demand selling verified, deanonymized user info to data brokers because "think of the children" bullocks. Money grab because plebs are the product.
  • ... to never buy Apple products. I don't need a nanny, and my children have parents that pay attention. Why should I have my privacy invaded and surveilled just because some parents don't know how to parent.

    And anyone who doesn't think this will be easily circumvented is naive or has never had an intelligent child.

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