In recent years, an increasing number of jurisdictions around the world have begun evaluating and adopting age assurance requirements of different kinds. Collectively, these moves represent a major change from how online services have been accessed over many decades, and they implicate a variety of important concerns and values for consumers, both adults and youth.
Age assurance technologies are complex systems that are being deployed on a wide scale on the internet for the first time. To help policymakers, service providers, independent experts, and users better understand how these systems work and their tradeoffs, this report provides a comprehensive technical assessment of the landscape of age assurance technologies. The report assesses each of the most commonly deployed age assurance architectures and mechanisms (referred to as “age signals”) against a common set of criteria: baseline accuracy, circumvention resistance, availability (which refers to the ability of eligible users to access age-restricted services), and privacy.
Click here to read the full report.