Australia finds age detection tech has many flaws but will work
- Reference: 1750400893
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/20/australia_age_assurance_trial_findings/
- Source link:
Australia’s government ordered the trial after its November 2024 [1]announcement of a policy to keep kids off social media. At the time, few nations had tried a similar scheme, so Canberra wanted to survey the field of relevant technologies and make sure they are up to the job.
We did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases
On Friday the team that ran those trials published its [2]preliminary findings [PDF], the main one being “Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective.”
“The preliminary findings indicate that there are no significant technological barriers preventing the deployment of effective age assurance systems in Australia. These solutions are technically feasible, can be integrated flexibly into existing services and can support the safety and rights of children online,” wrote Tony Allan, project director of the trial.
The findings do not, however, suggest that implementing age assurance will be easy.
[3]
Finding Three opens: “We found a plethora of approaches that fit different use cases in different ways, but we did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments.”
[4]
[5]
In Finding Eight, the reviewers note they “found opportunities for technological improvement including improving ease of use for the average person and enhancing the management of risk in age assurance systems.”
Finding Ten noted that systems the review’s authors assessed were “generally secure and consistent with information security standards” and that developers who made them “actively addressed attack vectors including AI-generated spoofing and forgeries.”
[6]
The authors also found “the rapidly evolving threat environment means that these systems - while presently fairly robust - cannot be considered infallible and must be continuously monitored and improved. Privacy compliance must be similarly monitored.”
Some providers were building tools which could lead to increased risk of privacy breaches due to unnecessary and disproportionate collection and retention of data
Finding Eleven mentions “concerning evidence that in the absence of specific guidance, service providers were over-anticipating the eventual needs of regulators about providing personal information for future investigations.”
It gets worse: “Some providers were found to be building tools to enable regulators, law enforcement or Coroners to retrace the actions taken by individuals to verify their age, which could lead to increased risk of privacy breaches due to unnecessary and disproportionate collection and retention of data.”
The trialists also found that parental control systems are flawed and [7]reportedly noted that age-checking tech is only accurate to within 18 months 85 percent of the time.
[8]Aussie businesses now have to fess up when they pay off ransomware crims
[9]New Zealand kind-of moves to ban social media for under-16s, require age checks for new accounts
[10]China turns on ‘minors mode’ that ensures kids only see wholesome socialist content online
[11]Privacy Commissioner warns the ‘John Smiths’ of the world can acquire ‘digital doppelgangers’
Australia’s government has promised to implement its social media bad on December 1st, so there’s not much time to address the issues mentioned in the preliminary findings. The initiative has broad public support. The Murdoch press, which can nearly always find a reason to criticize Australia’s center-left government, has campaigned in support of the policy using the slogan “Let Them Be Kids”.
Opponents of the policy point to social media’s central role in many aspects of modern life, and suggest that isolating kids from it until they turn 16 will leave them unprepared for the many perils found online. Others wonder why the scheme doesn’t apply to YouTube.
Justin Warren, the Founder and Principal Analyst of Australian firm PivotNine, is not impressed by the report.
[12]
"The preliminary results do not inspire confidence," he told The Register . "In fact, the preliminary results portray a level of confidence that is unsupported by evidence. It rather suggests that there is a pre-ordained outcome for which a justification must be manufactured. I hope I am mistaken in that assessment."
Warren took issues with the document's omission of data to support its findings. "We do not even have summary statistics about average or median accuracy rates, rates of false positives, how many systems were assessed as meeting particular technology readiness levels," he told us by email.
"Fundamental questions about how age assurance is expected to work in practice remain unanswered," he added. “It seems the government is determined to surprise everyone at the last possible moment and hope for the best. They are either incredibly brave, or incredibly foolish. Or possibly both."
Age assurance tech trial boss Allan’s remarks added the caveat the trial aimed to “assess whether the technology works and can be deployed - not to make policy decisions about whether or how it should be used.” ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/28/australia_children_social_media_ban/
[2] https://ageassurance.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/News-Release-Preliminary-Findings-for-publication-20250620.pdf
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aFUxN2xZhRsPvfm7FMgXeQAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aFUxN2xZhRsPvfm7FMgXeQAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aFUxN2xZhRsPvfm7FMgXeQAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aFUxN2xZhRsPvfm7FMgXeQAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-19/teen-social-media-ban-technology-concerns/105430458
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/31/australian_ransomware_reporting/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/new_zealand_kids_social_ban/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/02/china_minors_mode_enabled/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/australia_digital_doppelgangers_privacy_award/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aFUxN2xZhRsPvfm7FMgXeQAAA1g&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Hmmmm
Puritan prudes strike again.
Re: Hmmmm
I’m thinking more “social media”.
But whatever floats ya boat mate.
"It rather suggests that there is a pre-ordained outcome for which a justification must be manufactured." This is government. Of course there is.
Yeah, Right
"It rather suggests that there is a pre-ordained outcome for which a justification must be manufactured. I hope I am mistaken in that assessment." Believe me -- I know from long experience -- this is the way the Australian Government often does business. It was a pre-ordained outcome the moment the bill was presented to Parliament, damn the inconvenience of any facts that might get in the way.
"They are either incredibly brave, or incredibly foolish." There's no bravery here: bravery would be the Government telling parents to extract digit and take responsibility. And while it may be foolish on the part of some, it's devious on the part of others. Age assessment done this way opens the door to identifying (and therefore tracking) everyone, adults included, something I've been pointing out since around 2009.
While I don't think the average 15-year-old (or younger) should be on social media, my strong preference remains for device-based access control, e.g. provisioning the device in 'kid mode', which has been discussed at length elsewhere; it enables a whole lot more than blocking social media. The primary age assessor and decision maker should be the parent(s). It's privacy-preserving and respects the role of parents.
Sigh. Why are we always -- at least it seems to be always -- weighed down by the lack of foresight and intelligence of Governments and lobbyists? We need smarter people in Government and its agencies; not more people, just smarter ones.
Re: Yeah, Right
"The primary age assessor and decision maker should be the parent(s)"
And what if the parents don't give a toss? It's not the kids' fault if they've got shit parents but you'd be happy to condemn them to any harms they might befall with unfettered web access because.......?
Re: Yeah, Right
If the kids have shit parents then social media is the least of their problems. And it's still not the government's job to parent those kids unless a court has ordered them taken into state care.
Seems rather optimistic
After much delving on the ageassurance.com.au website, it turns out the project is evaluating age verification using three different methods:
• Age verification: checking official documents
• Age estimation: using AI to analyse facial features, hand movements or voice recording
• Age inference: having something, such as a credit card, that means your age was verified by someone else
There's obviously some value in knowing whether these work at a technical level with willing volunteers, but that's very different from actually using them in practice. What happens if you don't have appropriate official documentation or a credit card? What happens if you are skeptical of some porn-adjacent verification provider's commitment to data security? What happens when the age estimation AI is pitted against age obfuscation AI? And who's paying for it all?
This does seem like typical government wish-fulfilment: we have a messy societal problem that would magically disappear if only there were appropriate technology, so let's pretend there is.
So....."We Are Doing Something"...........
....in Canberra....as well as in SW1!
At least the politicians are consistent....even if "We are doing something" is always a lie!
Hmmmm
If a site requires age verification, then maybe it’s not a site you’d want to even visit.
At any age.