Well, who could have foreseen that?

One of the BBC stories about the OSA even explained what a VPN is and what it does in this situation!

Will probably appear as a BBC Bitesize feature soon.

Maybe the idea is to get everyone onto VPNs, because it makes surveillance easier. All the naughty people in one (or few) places, send a few subpoenas and superinjunctions, backdoor some VPN apps.

Much easier than legal battles with ISPs i'd guess, and politically easier with the "think of the children" arguments

I don't know!!! I'm am, utterly and completely, totally shocked.

Shocked, I say. Shocked.

Next thing you know, that damn bright orange disk that annoys you in the morning to "Wake up fool!" will rise again somewhere in the east. And then what will we do?!

This is summer in Britain, that's never going to happen.

I dunno, I think he's currently on a golfing holiday in Scotland...

It is funny though that you can easily watch corn content straight from Google without any age check involved. Bing is similar deal, but you just have to change your region in the setttings.

I guess the giants couldn't care less about our little OSA.

I prefer to get mine straight from CornHub.cob

It is such a fucking silly system.

The government has mandated these checks take place. Fine. But who does the checks? A Government system? No. Just another third party at a time when hacks etc are increasing. So I'm meant to trust a 3rd party based in America with my driving license?

Well, more fool them. I've trusted them with a photo of a driving license you can get from Google Images. And it worked. So, y'know, whoever put that photo up on the internet is going to have a bad time when YOTI (and the others) are eventually hacked.

Uploading pics of your ID is totally without risk..... just ask the users of the Tea app!

Uploading pics of your ID is totally without risk..... just ask the users of the Tea app!

It'll be fine-

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/3108084-the-tea-app-data-leak

Even lonely F-16s need love.

The facial ID can be spoofed by using the Death Stranding character creator, and presumably also by other face generators of similar quality. It should also be possible to spoof it with headshot video from the TV, if the resolution is good enough.

(The FAIL is theirs, not yours.)

The facial ID is just defanged Nazi style skull measuring.

The next far-right government can easily change the parameters to disallow access for groups they deem sub-human.

Keir Starmer has many porn accounts, I was bored over the weekend. He is one freaky guy based on his content taste.

Yeah the whole Maggie Thatcher role play thing is a bit weird, but oddly not unexpected.

So I'm meant to trust a 3rd party based in America with my driving license?

Purely in the interests of reseach.. I went to have a look for some (you)pron. Site I found required an account to be created, then threw up a doc explaining the age verification choices. Two of the options to verify age and account were to give credit card details, which would trigger a charge for £0. Or give mobile details which would send a verification code to mobile. It gave a rationale claiming Ofcom compliance because you must be over 18 to get a credit card, and sign up for a mobile phone.

No kids have phones, or access to credit/debit cards apparently.

So seemed a bit pointless unless the mobile verification bit has some way to identify that the phone is in the mitts of a kid. Or that kids aren't smart enough to go to an app store, grab a vpn app and then look at pron, or just foreign TV. Then it's just the general privacy & security issues around handing over sensitive PII to random verification services on the Interweb and then 'Trust me bro!' that that data won't be sold, traded or just leaked. Which is also a general issue with all the 2FA signups we get nagged for. Gimme you mobile number for 'security', and regular doses of spam. And then when that gets leaked, or just sold, the general PITA of getting a new mobile number and then trying to regain access to all the stuff that had 2FA linked to the old one.

To be fair, they're correct that credit card ownership is proof of age. A debit card number is distinguishable from a credit card number by the first 6 digits. Dunno about the phone ownership though, that does seem rather bonkers as an approach.

Not only does this whole scheme frighten the bejesus out of me with loads of people now going to sign up to services that will undoubtedly leak (and let's face it, the older generation) and leave people open to blackmail, but on top of that, every platform will choose a different one. So this won't be a one-and-done sign-up - your data will be across multiples of these companies depending on the services you access. The fact that Reddit and other non-embarrassing sites will be on the list is only going to compound the issue.

They had an option to make this really simple - mandate ISPs to be "non-adult" only (which I think they did?). I can't access certain sites on my mobile cos I can't be bothered to do the age verification with them - do the same with home broadband and job was done. Obviously the problem with that is it pushed parental responsibility onto the parents... And we couldn't have that.

Not sure about your "older generation" remark as I'm sure the "digital natives" will be quite blase about the whole thing. I suppose the inevitable porn to pwn hitting the headlines in a few months' time will finally make governments start tinking a bit more about the consequences in dabbling in this sort of legislation.

Not sure about your "older generation" remark as I'm sure the "digital natives" will be quite blase about the whole thing.

Hey! I resemble that remark. But I can still find pics of naked mole-rats, so I'm happy. I haven't tried another easy way to find pron, which would probably just be to search for "naked mole-rats" with safe search off.. Then see what Google recommends when they do their "Did you mean?" thing. Usually my answer is "No" but sometimes their alternative suggestions can be entertaining.

I suppose the inevitable porn to pwn hitting the headlines in a few months' time will finally make governments start tinking a bit more about the consequences in dabbling in this sort of legislation.

I get the feeling this is one of those bits of creeping compulsion so beloved of government nudge departments. There are other ominous bits of the OSA and EU equivalent looming. So they start with pron and voluntary age verification. That doesn't work, so next is mandatory ID verification, the erosion of anonymity and the ability to autogenerate fines or arrests for spreading "misinformation".

It will when it's politicians being caught in the crosshairs. Might actually be good for the country, as the ones least aware of good cyber-security practices will be the most likely to get embarrassed out of office, while the inevitable media storm it'll cause might focus the surviving parliamentarians' minds on taking a tougher stance regarding how businesses treat our personal information. There's nothing like a good scandal to poke our parliament into action.

The fact that Reddit and other non-embarrassing sites will be on the list is only going to compound the issue.

I dunno, Reddit can get pretty embarrassing and it might prevent me from doomscrolling. But Reddit needs cash, and it can get that by being 'forced' to implement age verification and then flogging off their verified users data. I fell down the rabbit hole of reading a bunch of people and their exploits with methylene blue recently. People are weird, but I guess the weirdest can be easily spotted by their blue teeth and gums. Then brain after they're autopsied.

But one of those things where there is a real OSA argument, ie communicating to people not to be f'ng idiots and not to drink fish tank cleaner or industrial chemicals. But there seems to be a lof of 'influencers' trying to convince people it's a good idea. Prosecuting a few of those might be a good start.

"The free market system failed, we are going to regulate Govt. mandated Digital IDs in order to gain access"

Oh no, here in America having your driver's license isn't the worst thing you can give: it's your email and address information. Await those details to be sold to [any] bidder and both flooded with useless spam mail for the rest of your natural life.

They'd also follow you to the grave if only your casket had a forwarding address.

Merkins have licenses. Everywhere else, license is a verb, licence is a noun. Could be important in this context...

When age verification company is based in Cyprus. Me thinks - that is totally not Russian.

Starmer needs his head examined.

This thing started with the previous government. Blame the real eejits here. The Home Office.

(1) Dad cruises porn site.....properly signed up as "18 or over".

Dad walks away from end point.

Kid takes over!

(2) 18 Year old and 14 year old are hanging out.

18 year old signs in as "18 or over".

14 year old takes over end point.

(3) AI used to fake a driving licence?

(4) Stolen driving licence?

......

.....how is your average internet service provider going to police any of these scenarios?

Of course, there's always the STASI (Victoria, Cheltenham) tracking IP addresses.

Maybe the thought police will be banging on doors looking for under age transgressors?

The Online Safety Act is the wrong tool for the wrong problem.

You don't think that it's a brilliant piece of 'nudge' thinking by the government to get people to think seriously about online security?

And as a bonus, normalize the use of VPNs so that people who really need them, eg people protesting the government, are less of an obvious target.

"You don't think that it's a brilliant piece of 'nudge' thinking by the government to get people to think seriously about online security?"

Comedy gold!

You don't think that it's a brilliant piece of 'nudge' thinking by the government to get people to think seriously about online security?

The government are too stupid to come up with a plan anywhere never that level of complexity. Plus, it's a plan that has a long term pay-off: We all know how shit governments are at long term plans.

"You don't think that it's a brilliant piece of 'nudge' thinking by the government to get people to think seriously about online security?"

No. It's a piece of unuerpassed government stupidity of people who think they think about online security the children. When the whole thing blows up in their face it will be the political class as a whole that gets a much needed nudge.

Labour just love legislation...it beats actually doing something any day. I think the previous Labour government enacted more legislation than any previous one. They can't help themselves. No, I'm not a Tory, nor, god forfend, Reform, but Labour really need to get past legislating against everything. As an aside, I have to laugh at Badenoch.. I'm going to make doctors' strikes illegal - you had 14 years to do that, dear.

I believe it was Tony Blair's first government which in five years more than doubled the about of statute law on England and Wales. Can't remember if that was by pages or by laws, though.

They did pass the vital [1]Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition) Act 1998

- just to make it clear that they are prohibiting causing a nuclear explosion in the UK

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_(Prohibition_and_Inspections)_Act_1998

To be fair, the draconian penalties for breaking the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition) law are the only thing that has stopped me doing just that.

Downvote because... The Online Safety Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023 which means it happen under Rishi Sunak, so it's the other lot that did this.

Labour disliked it because it wasn't going far enough.

Also Labour could have easily scrapped it like they did with Rwanda scheme.

Don't be daft.

The Rwanda scheme was just that, a scheme. It takes an act of parliament to repeal a law, and they wouldn't have the votes to do that without addressing the underlying issues.

Nonsense. If there is a will, there is a way.

That's just it, there isn't a will. The parliamentary agenda tends to be quite cramped, so for something to get in there requires a significant amount of pressure either on the government or it's backbenchers. Labour simply had bigger fish to fry coming into office, and since nearly nobody outside of the tech sector had a clue about this law or what the implications were, there wasn't any really pressure on them to prioritise fixing this. As if stands, I'm not sure if there ever will be, it might just be the case that either handing over ID/card details or browsing the web via a VPN just quietly become the new norm. If they won't gain a significant number of votes for doing it, or lose a significant number for not, then sheer political inertia will prevent any further action on the subject. The only reason this law ever passed in the first place was that Sunak's Tories were out of any other ideas and realised that if they set all the dates right, they wouldn't even have to be on the hook for implementing this dog's breakfast.

And the only way of solving the problems with this stupid law is if everyone has official government ID cards - and the only thing stopping this government from rolling out ID cards is that Blair would get the credit

That's just it, there isn't a will.

That's entirely my point. Labour is fully complicit in this.

Labour simply had bigger fish to fry coming into office, and since nearly nobody outside of the tech sector had a clue about this law or what the implications were, there wasn't any really pressure on them to prioritise fixing this.

Absolute nonsense. They know exactly what it is and what are the implications. They just don't care about that.

If they won't gain a significant number of votes for doing it, or lose a significant number for not, then sheer political inertia will prevent any further action on the subject.

It is only a problem if it challenges the uni-party construct. If Reform, entering the arena, gets on the same page with big corporations de facto running this corrupt circus, then there is nothing lost. At worst, they'll just go on speech circuit and release a few ghost written books that big corporations will buy container loads as a thank you gesture for good service.

The only reason this law ever passed in the first place was that Sunak's Tories were out of any other ideas and realised that if they set all the dates right, they wouldn't even have to be on the hook for implementing this dog's breakfast.

It has passed because both "sides" of the aisle wanted it to pass.

They're both equally short-sighted. When one of these "verification services" gets pwned - as seems inevitable - they might find it's time to go to Specsavers (local independent opticians are also available).

When one of these "verification services" gets pwned - as seems inevitable

The lessons will be learned!

> The lessons will be learned.

Maybe if we started asking for the measurable learning outcomes of these "lessons" and starting chasing up on their progress they would think just a little bit more before spouting this platitude?

I am shocked! Who could have predicted this? How could the glorious plans of the nanny state not have accounted for this?

Amusingly 'think of the children' doesnt seem to think of how most of us aint children and the children are smarter than the idiots in charge.

It's a grave disservice for El Reg to suggest that all the people complaining just want to access porn. There are several other major issues raised by this act that are causing people to want to circumvent the checks.

First, people are being asked to age verify by either providing video of their faces or a copy of their passport or driving licence. I expect Reg users to be tech savvy, so I won't have to explain how this is leaving everyone who verifies at risk of identity theft.

Second, and more importantly, the OSA is being used as a method of censorship beyond adult material. As the article notes, social media sites are being hit with the "inappropriate content" stick as well. One notable and extremely relevant case is the prohibition on viewing video evidence of IDF atrocities in Gaza on Twitter. Twitter doesn't have a means set up to verify age, so the practical effect is to block UK residents from seeing what is happening. This is an extremely disturbing development given the government's record on the I/P conflict.

On top of that, under the OSA Wikipedia would be rated as a category 1 site, forcing them to require age checks in order to access it and/or to heavily censor the site. Wikipedia have already stated that they have no intention of complying, so unless the government backs down they will soon be banned in the UK - removing access to a huge repository of free information.

It's not about the kids, and it's not about the grumblesites.

It's never been about the kids. It's always been about the oppression of the subjects.