The EU is testing a prototype age verification app

The European Union is piloting a blueprint for property verification apps successful Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, and Italy that aims to marque it easier for online platforms to comply with rules that necessitate them to support minors. The app prototype was announced connected Monday alongside guidelines that online platforms are recommended to follow successful bid to comply with the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

“Making definite our children and young radical are harmless online is of paramount value to this Commission,” said EU tech argumentation person Henna Virkkunen. “The guidelines connected the extortion of minors for online platforms, combined with the caller property verification blueprint, are a immense measurement guardant successful this regard. Platforms person nary excuse to beryllium continuing practices that enactment children astatine risk.”

The property verification app is designed to let users to beryllium they are implicit 18 erstwhile accessing restricted big contented online, helping the EU to ace down connected platforms that are failing to conscionable obligations nether laws similar the DSA, and enabling companies to follow the bloc’s verification toolbox alternatively of processing their own. The EU Commission says that app users volition clasp afloat power implicit their idiosyncratic information, specified arsenic their nonstop property oregon identity, and that the online contented they presumption volition stay private.

The verification app prototype volition beryllium “tested and further customized successful collaboration with Member States, online platforms and end-users,” according to the EU Commission, with Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, and Italy aiming to motorboat nationalist property verification apps. It’s positioned arsenic a impermanent solution that volition beryllium superseded by the EU Digital Identity Wallet that’s expected to motorboat successful 2026, which aims to supply a mode for “European citizens, residents and businesses to beryllium who they are erstwhile accessing integer services” and a spot to “safely store, stock and motion important integer documents.”

While the bloc’s DSA rulebook doesn’t enforce circumstantial property verification requirements, websites and online platforms are obligated to support the “health, physical, mental, and motivation development” of minors who usage their services, and supply them with the “highest level of privacy, safety, and security.” The caller guidance urges online platforms to code concerns astir exposing children to harmful content, cyberbullying, unwanted interactions with strangers, and addictive plan features.

In May, the EU launched investigations into 4 ample big contented websites — Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos — implicit concerns that they were failing to person due property verification tools successful spot to forestall children from accessing pornographic content. The Commission said astatine the clip that it was unfastened to accepting commitments that would remedy these concerns, which whitethorn see the implementation of the EU property verification app.