Apple Brings Device-Level Age Verification to Two More Countries

11 days ago Apple launched device-level age restrictions in the U.K. There were some glitches, reports the blog 9to5Mac. For me, the experience was an entirely painless one, taking less than 30 seconds. All I had to do was tap a confirm and continue button, and Apple told me that the length of time I'd had an Apple account was used to confirm that I'm 18+. Others, however, experienced difficulties with the process timing out or failing to complete. We summarized some of the steps you can take to try to address this. Apple has since listed additional acceptable ways to verify your age. "You can confirm your age with a credit card, or by scanning a driver's license or one of the following PASS-accredited Proof of Age cards: CitizenCard, My ID Card, TOTUM ID card, or Young Scot National Entitlement Card."

If you don't verify your age, then you'll be treated as a child or teenager, meaning that both the web content filter and communication safety features are switched on.
Apple is continuing the roll-out in Singapore (population 6 million) and South Korea (population 52 million), the article points out, citing a new Apple support document.

South Korea's law actually requires Apple to re-verify someone's age annually.

You need a license to click

[Anonymous Coward]

With all this being built into the hardware, how will we get around it?

The real death of the internet

[rsilvergun]

Complete 24/7 tracking of you as an individual. They have to have a unique identifier for you and it has to be stored somewhere for this to work.

And we are just letting it happen because why the fuck not? Any politicians it's going to oppose this is also not going to play into our love of moral panics and knee-jerk reactions. Making them completely non-viable.

Re: Does the Pirate Party still exist?

[OrangeTide]

The Privacy Act of 1974 technically restricts what personally identifable information (PII) a federal agency can collect and retain. I would be OK extending this to state and local agencies. That would potentially give us a way to go after state laws that require age verfication in devices and operating systems. But it seems that there is no political will to pump the brakes on the surveillance state.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

The Privacy Act of 1974 technically restricts what personally identifiable information (PII) a federal agency can collect and retain.

Is that just directly or does it include data that can be purchased through third-part brokers? 'Cause some agencies seem to be using the latter.

Re:

[LainTouko]

It happens because big corporations are above the law. Remotely activating filters on things people have bought fairly in a shop unless they show you some ID is obviously a crime in violation of the Computer Misuse Act. But Apple are a big corporation, so nobody will be prosecuted. Like nobody was prosecuted when Sony included trojan horse software on music CDs, back when music CDs were a thing. Like nobody is prosecuted when Microsoft says WIndows 10 will be the final version of Windows, people buy compute

Re:

[pete6677]

They aren't being forced. They're doing this willingly and enthusiastically.

Reg peopl didn't vote for these anti-privacy regs

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Meta's and Google's lobbyists, paid bloggers and influencers, and corrupt politicians did. It was globally-coordinated.

What's the secret?

[PuddleBoy]

"South Korea's law actually requires Apple to re-verify someone's age annually."

So they're concerned that, as time passes, a devious person will... grow younger?

I need to get in on this right away!

Re:

[ukoda]

I was wondering the same thing. Do they have many timer travelers there, or maybe aging is different there. It could explain K-Pop. Neither the Doctor nor Benjamin Button are from there, I wonder if they were also subject to annual age re-verification?

They want current contact info

[drnb]

"South Korea's law actually requires Apple to re-verify someone's age annually."

So they're concerned that, as time passes, a devious person will... grow younger?

They probably want a current verified ID, with the current address and contact info that comes with that. Ie. Also 15, 18, and 21 years olds may be required to provide different levels of info.

Re:

[_merlin]

Nah, it's supposed to be to verify that you haven't given the device/account/whatever to an underage person. It's to verify each year that the current user of the device/account/whatever isn't underage, not just the person who was using it the first time age verification was done.

Re:

[unixisc]

Yeah, once South Korea knows someone's age, why can't they automatically calculate the future age from the age that's inputted and the time lapsed since?

Besides, why do they need anyone's age? All they need is whether somebody is or isn't an adult, which would simply be a "yes/no" flag

Fight digital ID

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

An important thing to note is all of the methods tie you to a real identity. Even account age given over the requisite period, it would be enough time for Apple to do data collection for most people (which may be why some old accounts are not considered eligible) This is a hill I will die on - I will not give the OS my identity. I will sooner stop using cell phones entirely, or switch to a pager+Linux laptop. Not even my carrier has it anymore. After I caught T-Mobile selling my PII again after I opted out, I switched to an MVNO with a pseudonym. Can't trust any of these corpos with your PII.

Re:

[sinij]

Fight the good fight. Despite being early adopter of Gmail, I moved away from everything Google after they demanded I perform age verification. Thankfully I've seen it coming and they were unable to hold my data hostage.

Re:

[real_nickname]

I can't count how many times my PII have been leaked by private and public entities. Luckily, each times they assure me my password has not been leaked only my name, address, phone number, social IDs protected by this password are in the wild. I can't win this fight, my PII are open data at this time. And because government uses prehistorical methods to confirm identity, it's very easy to impersonate someone with all these data.

Re:

[teg]

(...)This is a hill I will die on - I will not give the OS my identity. I will sooner stop using cell phones entirely, or switch to a pager+Linux laptop.

Not even my carrier has it anymore. After I caught T-Mobile selling my PII again after I opted out, I switched to an MVNO with a pseudonym. Can't trust any of these corpos with your PII.

Here in Norway, you can not buy a sim card without some sort of ID, physical or electronic (we've got bank certified online IDs we can use for sig documents, online purchases with credit card etc). However, if the carrier was caught selling your PII they'd be in massive trouble. Fines could be up to 10% of gross revenue, as per the GDPR.

Re:

[brunes69]

The incredibly frustrating thing is we have had technical solutions to this for decades (Zero Knowledge Proofs, which allow a third party to verify something - such as your age - without actually sharing your PII with them) but no one actually implements the damn stuff properly.

Welll

[liqu1d]

Guess I'm not updating anymore. Hello android forks

Re:

[drnb]

Have you previously entered a credit card into your apple account or apple wallet. That's probably all they need. It may be a non-issue for most adult apple users.

Unintedned consiquences

[houstonbofh]

"If you don't verify your age, then you'll be treated as a child or teenager, meaning that both the web content filter and communication safety features are switched on."

How can this go wrong? [roblox]

Let the enshittification contiune

[MpVpRb]

Every day, everything seems to get worse, whether politics or tech, everything seems to get worse.
Every day

This will get standardised.

[John Allsup]

What will happen at some point is that sites that require age verification will require some kind of verifiable token generate by the OS-level age verification. Rather than the myriad proliferating independent age verfication. But it's a legislative ratchet that is unlikely to move in the opposite direction. If you don't want OS level age verification, then likely you'll be confined to the part of the internet that doesn't require age verification.

Re:

[drnb]

Not host OS based. There will likely be some trusted age verification service. Much like the various trusted certificates we already use on the web.

Re:

[codebase7]

Yeah, the part with all of the "protected" and vulnerable kids on it........

Singapore

[unixisc]

Okay, I read the South Korean law requirements, but what has Singapore been asking, for Apple to make that a requirement?

Good bye anonymity!

[oldgraybeard]

"If you don't verify your age, then you'll be treated as a child or teenager" so every adult will now be properly marked for surveillance and monitoring. Which will allow for better ad targeting and higher data value when sold.

Re:

[CommunityMember]

Fuck Apple.

Apple (and all the multi-national tech companies) follow the laws and regulations in the jurisdictions they operate in (to do otherwise is not an option). If you don't like age verification laws, target the countries political leadership with the expletive.

Dystopian

[HnT]

This is by far the most dystopian the Internet and modern technology have looked.. so far.
I have no hope for the coming years.

There is no winning option

[Baron_Yam]

You have a choice - unfettered anonymity with free speech or proven identity with responsibility. We always try (to varying degrees) to have it both ways, but it is not possible. They are mutually exclusive.

If you don't have proof of identity, you get disinformation, propaganda, and fraud. If you do, you have the government and businesses putting you under a microscope.

There is no solution to this issue.

Not bad.

[Petersko]

This isn't the worst idea. Reasonably effective, and, honestly, held in the hands of a company that, while being wildly profitable, has generally been a good steward of personal info. If it's being forced by regulation, I guess I'd rather have them do it than almost anybody else.

Google pulled out of China. Apple didn't.

[drinkypoo]

When China demanded that vendors operating app stores bend over completely for fascism, Google pulled out and Apple did not. Thus we knew conclusively that they would rather support fascism than leave any amount of money on the table.

Now we (Apple's detractors on this issue) can see that exactly what we predicted has come to pass. Apple is joyfully assisting with oppression anywhere they can do so. To them, government demands for totalitarianism are irrelevant, because Apple sees no problem with forcing use

Gutenberg

[Budenny]

We are facing the same problem that Gutenberg created in the 15th century: a proliferation in the ability of everyone to create and communicate whatever they want and whatever people want to read. Due mainly to a dramatic fall in the cost of production of books. But its far more extreme than Gutenberg because the drop in costs is so much greater. In an era in which everyone has Internet access, a smart phone and/or laptop, writing in publishable format has become much easier and publishing itself has ba