UK legislation to require age verification for adult sites

The road to the mass adoption of the internet was paved with scandal, criminality and of course sleaze.

No other phenomenon in history has brought about such rapid adoptions in technology than pornography. From the printing press to the celluloid revolution from bulletin boards to the dark web,

Porn has lead the way…

…swiftly followed by the moral masses tutting their disapproval and then inevitably legislation.

So it seems ironic that government legislation and social concern are the forces that are driving this taboo industry to innovate around the protection of personal privacy.

The UK’s draft Online Safety Bill is recommending that UK Adult Sites adopt age verification to ensure that all visitors are over 18 years old. With threats of fines of bans hanging over these ‘content providers’, and no direction on how to implement the solution, they are quickly trying to discover new ways to identity visitors who don’t want to be identified! 🤔

In the past credit cards may have seemed like a good way to verify age, but how comfortable would you be in handing your financial details over to such sites? And how much more uncomfortable would you become if you were asked to hand over your Passport or Driving Licences and then to take a ‘Selfie’ before you could browse your favourite elicit content?

Bring Your Own Identity

The smart money is on a solution called “bring your own identity”, where each user retains their own identity documentation on their smartphone (within a Digital Wallet) and then selects exactly what personal information to share, e.g. Share just their D.O.B from their passport and not their whole passport.

When setting up a digital wallet it verifies your identity by matching your photo id documents to your live ‘selfie’ (using sophisticated artificial intelligence). The receiving site can then trust any snippet of data you share without knowing everything else about you…

…Because they trust the intermediary: The Digital Wallet.

Digital Wallet provider Folio has pioneered the way in “Bring your own identity”, giving their digital wallet users the ability to upload: bank cards, government id’s, health certificates and any personal documents of value.

Folio doesn’t store any personal data as all the documents are encrypted securely on each personal phone so the user only shares what they decide to.

Folio has a free sandbox test environment for age verification here.

This revolution in “bring your own identity” is set to go far beyond age verification for Adult sites, with cash and services becoming increasingly digital the need to prove identity is far reaching: From Bank Accounts to Crypto Exchanges, from Election Voting to Travel, our need to prove our identity without compromising it, is already becoming a critical component of online life.

Over the past decade big tech companies monetised and abused personal data and individuals are wanting to take back their online identities, sharing personal information only when they choose to. Digital Wallets are the mechanism for this transition, putting the ownership of personal data back into the rightful hands of the individual in a way which is simple, convenient and secure.

Pornography often cited as abusive, immoral and demeaning may ironically now become the biggest driver for personal freedom since the internet itself.