back to article Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

The UK's communications regulator has published guidance for website operators aimed at preventing under-18s from accessing pornographic content online via "highly effective age assurance" techniques. Ofcom expects age-checking processes on applicable services to be in place by July 2025. This includes verifying through open …

  1. Mage Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Bonkers

    This is a privacy fail and it won't keep underage off sites.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Bonkers

      No but it will be a better incentive to having ID cards than just love of TBlair

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bonkers

        Belgium has the best incentive. Beer vending machines in stations.

        1. JimboSmith

          Re: Bonkers

          This is a privacy fail and it won't keep underage off sites.

          No you’re quite correct of course it won’t but it’s a good example of Daily Mail* politics. Simply pick something that the Daily Mail readers are up in arms over and introduce rules/legislation to ‘fix’ it. It doesn’t matter that it is the equivalent of sticking a Band Aid plaster over a large crack in a dam. It’s that you’re seen to be doing something even if it’s likely to be bloody ineffective.

          *If it includes something to do with the late Diana Princess of Wales then it could also be Daily Express politics

          1. Apprentice

            Re: Bonkers

            Of course it's the Guardian politics that have created this and countless other problems we face today in society.

          2. Persona Silver badge

            Re: Bonkers

            Completely untrue. There are many many Daily Mail readers who wish to retain their anonymity whilst viewing porn.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      + more malware

      Hijacked sites, malware and spam will be the alternative. This will cause more harm than benefit - similar to illegal drugs.

      Government sites across the US are awash in hardcore porn: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/14/government-websites-porn-spam-hack/

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bonkers

      I don't even think this is ECHR compliant and will face judicial reviews and legal challenges to this seeing its a huge privacy and legal nightmare.

      1. Gordon 10 Silver badge

        Re: Bonkers

        Explain why?

        I dont think you have a clue do you?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Bonkers

          It clearly violates privacy and free speech rights.

          1. talk_is_cheap

            Re: Bonkers

            The UK does not have free speech rights, it has protected freedom of expression for certain things, and oddly easy access to porn is not on the list.

            1. Gordon 10 Silver badge
              Meh

              Re: Bonkers

              13 downvotes and only one person tried to say why. They failed - but at least they tried.

              As well as no unconstrained right to free speech (p.s. access to porn isn't free speech), neither in the UK or indeed even the US.

              Also those crying privacy - this doesnt breach GDPR or the Data Protection Act (which is how GDPR is embedded in UK legislation).

              Part of GDPR is if its proportionality. This 99% likely is. It's going to be brave judge who rules against a minimally invasive age check and storage of proven DOB.

              PS I do this stuff for a living.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Bonkers

                > Also those crying privacy - this doesnt breach GDPR or the Data Protection Act (which is how GDPR is embedded in UK legislation).

                The Data Protection Act is how GDPR is embedded in UK legislation? I don't believe that to be a correct statement.

                The previous Data Protection law in the UK (UK DPA 1998) came about when the EU introduced the Data Protection Directive 1995 which came into force in 1998. Like all EU directives it was brought into force by each EU member country introducing their own law. In the case of the UK the UK DPA 1998 implemented the EU Directive.

                The EU later replaced the Data Protection Directive 1995 with the GDPR. As this was a regulation, rather than a directive, then the GDPR itself came into force in every EU country (including the UK) automatically, there was no need for each country to implement their own law to implement it. The GDPR does permit individual countries to implement some specific derogations (deviations) from GDPR which are mentioned (such as by Article 23).

                The UK DPA 1998 was introduced by the UK for several reasons, to define derogations from the GDPR, and also to introduce additional law over and above the GDPR (i.e. the UK DPA 1998 defines some additional criminal offenses such as de-anonymising personal data and altering personal data to prevent disclosure). So the UK DPA 1998 operated in conjunction with the GDPR.

                As part of Brexit a UK law, the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018, was based to automagically convert existing EU laws, including GDPR, into equivalent UK laws. As part of the whole Brexit-related process the UK GDPR came into effective which is basically the previous (EU) GDPR with references to the EU replaced/removed (there are Keeling Schedules online showing the changes between GDPR and UK GDPR).

                From the ICO: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the-eu/data-protection-and-the-eu-in-detail/the-uk-gdpr/

                "The GDPR is retained in domestic law as the UK GDPR, but the UK has the independence to keep the framework under review. The ‘UK GDPR’ sits alongside an amended version of the DPA 2018."

                So no, "the Data Protection Act (which is how GDPR is embedded in UK legislation)" is not a correct statement, the UK GDPR and the (amended) UK DPA 1998 still sit alongside each other as distinct laws.

    4. feral

      Re: Bonkers

      It is a fail and intended to fail. When it does, we will hear a fake, media clamour for deanonymised internet, a requirement to be identified online. Apple, Google, x, banks, etc are preparing to be id authenticators.

    5. graemep
      FAIL

      Re: Bonkers

      I would prefer a simple ban on porn sites. It would not create the surveillance, and IDing people creates potential for blackmail. A lot of people will watch things they do not want their family or spouse to know them. ID them and you can blackmail them.

      Imagine where this leaves someone from a conservative culture watching gay porn, or someone with a kink their SO does not know about, or a million other things.

      Better to ban altogether and not let people expose themselves to the risk

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Ban Porn?

        You can have my porn when you pry them from my cold, sticky, callused hands.

        1. Gordon 10 Silver badge

          Re: Ban Porn?

          Easy.... they'll be trembling from fatigue and RSI.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bonkers

        > ID [people] and you can blackmail them. [..imagine..] someone from a conservative culture watching gay porn [..etc..]

        This part is perfectly correct.

        > better to ban altogether and not let people expose themselves to the risk

        This part is utterly stupid.

        In reality; people will want to look at that porn anyway. And then, if anyone finds out they're doing that, not only can they be leant upon and blackmailed *just* because of the socially-disapproved-of preferences already mentioned above, but now *also* because they're doing something illegal.

        Something I've no doubt that could- and likely would- see an attempt to see someone with those otherwise unconventional-but-harmless preferences lumped together (by a malicious prosecution, state and/or blackmailer) with the most unpleasant sexual offenders.

        So, if you want us to keep our mouths shut and not tell your friends, the police, etc. that you were looking at that fetish porn, here's a little favour that we need from you...

  2. ChrisElvidge Silver badge

    Age verification

    My ISP already knows how old I am, and so allows me to access "adult" sites. Why should anyone else need to do age verification on me?

    1. Adam Foxton

      Re: Age verification

      That's probably the most important point. If someone pays for the Internet access, they should be in control of it and they should have responsibility to secure it. If I want to stop my kids looking at something, it's up to me to stop them. Not Kier Starmer, not whoever these other muppets are, me. I'm their parent, the responsibility is on me.

      If I don't know how to protect them, it's my responsibility to find out, not to have everyone else locked out.

      Online Safety is not improved by teaching people from an early age to stick their credit card details into sites as readily as they click 'accept all cookies'. Children are not protected by stopping them being able to have conversations with their parents- and adding barriers like this is exactly what this will achieve.

      The person with the contract with the ISP should be the one whose age is checked, and who then bears responsibility for what's done by any others they allow to use their connection.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: Age verification

        The fact that I _have_ an ISP is ipso facto proof that I am old enough to manage a contract. I am therefore of an age to view anything I bloody well want (unless specifically forbidden by law). End of story.

        Adam Foxton's point about the responsibility for others using his connection is entirely correct.

        Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to the mobile phones that so many have glued to the end of their arms from a very early age. I don't know how to fix that.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Age verification

          "I don't know how to fix that."

          Glue remover.

        2. imanidiot Silver badge

          Re: Age verification

          Children can't have a SIM (with data) contract either, so it's STILL the responsibility of the person providing them that access.

          1. katrinab Silver badge
            Black Helicopters

            Re: Age verification

            Last time I bought a PAYG SIM for a burner phone, the only thing they asked me for was the £10 cost to buy it.

            1. TRT

              Re: Age verification

              How much data allowance was there on that deal, and how many minutes of full-screen grumble will that download?

              1. NeilA

                Re: Age verification

                quite a bit... - https://smarty.co.uk/plans/16gb-data - £50GB for £8 for example

                1. Confucious2

                  Re: Age verification

                  Then they should block adult sites on PAYG SIMs unless you can prove your age. For contract SIMs you already have. Not that difficult.

                  1. Scotech

                    Re: Age verification

                    Most network operators block adult sites by default. However, removing that block is usually trivial for the account holder, as operators just assume all account holders are adults, since it says in their ToS that they must be. Simple to close that loophole - don't allow the block to be lifted on PAYG accounts that don't have a credit card associated, or some other form of strong age-verification.

                    1. anothercynic Silver badge

                      Re: Age verification

                      So you become a gatekeeper for those who have debit cards but refuse to use a CC... Tsk tsk. ;-)

                    2. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: Age verification

                      I don't have a credit card and have never had one. I'm in my 50's.

                      People have to get a Credit card if they want to watch porn? That's stupid.

                      I do have a VPN though.

                    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

                      Re: Age verification

                      "don't allow the block to be lifted on PAYG accounts that don't have a credit card associated, or some other form of strong age-verification."

                      Or, if you buy the PAYG SIM in person, why not just let the sales person make that decision? Supermarkets do it millions of times per day when buying plastic picnic cutlery and other "dangerous" items ;-)

                  2. Soruk

                    Re: Age verification

                    This is exactly what Giffgaff do.

                  3. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Age verification

                    I had great trouble upgrading my SIM contract last year because they needed a credit check. The website needed to know how long I had been at my current address and how long I had had my bank account... turns out 25+ and 40+ years wasn't an available option

                    A phone call was necessary

                    (the fact that I had recently retired from the company should have helped but didn't)

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Age verification

                  That's more of a "non-contract" rather than a traditional PAYG - it's a monthly plan. Not open to under-16s, and although admittedly it probably isn't checked, it does require payment information.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Age verification

              “Last time I bought a PAYG SIM for a burner phone, the only thing they asked me for was the £10 cost to buy it.”

              My last PAYG sim wouldn’t allow me to access adult sites. I had to verify my age with the phone network before I could do so. It didn’t cover things like Twitter etc. but it did cover all the sites I tried (in the interets of research with a concerned parent) the sites just showing Pr0n and accessed over the phone data connection.

          2. anothercynic Silver badge

            Re: Age verification

            Contract no, PAYG yes. And for the latter, no-one asks you for your age either when you walk into a corner shop to buy one.

            The UK is one of the few countries where no ID checks are done whatsoever on PAYG SIMs.

            1. I am David Jones Silver badge

              Re: Age verification

              Are you saying that in the UK you can buy and run a PAYG sim without providing any ID, without proving yourself to be an adult?

              1. katrinab Silver badge

                Re: Age verification

                Yes, I can buy a PAYG SIM in the same way that I buy a bar of chocolate, and very often from the same shop.

                1. Mrs Spartacus

                  Re: Chocolate

                  Soon, however, Comrade Starmer will require ID checks for chocolate bars. Because, "Think of the children/sugar".

                  1. anothercynic Silver badge

                    Re: Chocolate

                    It was Lord Haw-Haw Idiot of Johnson, or his predecessor, who put the sugar checks in place... Starmer only works with what he's been left by his predecessors (including Lady Lettuce Head and Lord I Wear Sneakers To Look Cool). Just sayin'...

                2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

                  Re: Age verification

                  I sometimes buy PAYG sims in the UK for mobile phones that I want to keep alive (for example, one running UBports just so I can keep abreast of how it's changing).

                  Very few of these will actually work until you activate them, and activating them requires you to provide at least some form of ID, even if that is merely an email address.

                  I have not come across one in recent years that allows you to just buy it, put it in a 'phone and use it immediately. If somebody knows a supplier that does, let me know, because I have some devices that I could use them in.

                  Also, I've found that there are normally site blocks that apply to all PAYG SIMs that I've used that you have to provide ID in order to lift.

                3. I am David Jones Silver badge

                  Re: Age verification

                  But does it work off-the-shelf for calls? For data? Shirley at some point a proper non-anonymous contract has to be formed.

                  I was in SE Asia recently and at the airports SIMs were cheap as … well, chips. Cash only for a number of days of access but they took a photograph there and then of me holding up my open passport. So easy but not anonymous.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Age verification

                    It really does work for off the shelf, no questions asked.

                    You've already paid up front for the service, and they retain the right to randomly disconnect you, but their financial exposure is minimal and so that is where it concludes.

            2. Adam Foxton

              Re: Age verification

              Okay, so we've got a point of failure here. Or do we?

              Maybe we could try age-restricting PAYG SIMs, or making them only able to be topped up online or by credit card. But if, rather than just talking to their parents, a kid has gone to that length to get round your content restrictions, they're going to succeed.

              And when all the websites are locked down, when all the devices are hobbled, when every transaction is logged, when you've finally made the Internet safe for children... then, the kids will start sharing photos on USB sticks and this whole puritanical cycle will start again with removable storage.

              Oh, wait, schoolkids were sharing porn on removable drives back when the year started with a 1. So this legislation's already been out of date for a quarter century.

              1. David 132 Silver badge
                Coffee/keyboard

                Re: Age verification

                > Oh, wait, schoolkids were sharing porn on removable drives back when the year started with a 1. So this legislation's already been out of date for a quarter century.

                A quarter century? Tch! Kids today.

                Me and my schoolchums were sharing ASCII, Mode 7/Teletext, and low-res bitmap porn on Acorn BBC 5¼" floppy - i.e. removeable! - disks in the early-mid 80s. It came as a great shock to me in adulthood to discover that areolae weren't actually bright magenta in colour :-P

                And I'm sure after they read this, another commentard will pitch in with memories of sharing porn on Jacquard loom punched cards in even earlier decades :)

                (For some reason, I don't recall ever having porn on my Spectrum. Perhaps the colour-clash was too much of a buzzkill.)

                The icon is a fair representation of the condition of the keyboards in our school's computer room at the time.

                1. Cynical Pie

                  Re: Age verification

                  Not the Jacquard Loom perhaps but I remember a school friend who's dad had a newsagents who did a roaring trade in renting magazines for the discerning gentleman to teenage boys for a small deposit (no pun intended) and a daily rental fee

                  1. Simon Harris

                    Re: Age verification

                    I remember one of my school friends typing a letter on the school computer to the newsagent, pretending to be his dad, and asking the newsagent for a copy of Razzle (or whatever it was at the time, this was around 1980), and to preserve the boy’s innocence, to seal it in the plain brown envelope he took to the shop.

                    Amazingly, the subterfuge worked!

                  2. Soruk
                    Mushroom

                    Re: Age verification

                    Small deposit? TMI.

                2. Andy The Hat Silver badge

                  Re: Age verification

                  "another commentard will pitch in with memories of sharing porn on Jacquard loom punched cards in even earlier decades "

                  I saw a documentary about oil-on-canvas depictions of vile acts by the Bishop of Bath and Wells painted by A Genius ... "Don't bother to try to destroy it, we have the preliminary sketches ..." :-)

                  1. UnknownUnknown

                    Re: Age verification

                    Paedophillia af Wikipedia.??

                    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylas_and_the_Nymphs_(painting)

                    Before you even talk anime the shite on cesspits like (soon to be moderator free) FB, X, Tik-Tok, Instagram ….

              2. Mrs Spartacus

                Re: Age verification

                Spot on. I also predict a roaring trade in over-18s selling "entertainment" packs on USB sticks to minors. I recall way back in the day an older pupil at school buying our "top shelf" magazines for the rest us rug-rats. We've come full circle, predictably.

                1. BartyFartsLast Silver badge

                  Re: Age verification

                  A new age of USB hedgeporn

                  1. Simon Harris
                    Coat

                    Re: Age verification

                    If you watch smut on Microsoft's web-browser, is that Edgeporn ?

            3. steviebuk Silver badge

              Re: Age verification

              Because they make their money from the dealers, kidnappers, terroists, money launders, mob, the list goes on, so they also don't want that bit regulated :)

              1. steviebuk Silver badge

                Re: Age verification

                This was in regards to the pay as you go or "burner phones".

        3. YetAnotherXyzzy

          Re: Age verification

          "Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to the mobile phones that so many have glued to the end of their arms from a very early age. I don't know how to fix that."

          At the convenience store last evening I saw the owner's 4 year old granddaughter scrolling through short form videos. It wasn't the toddler who paid for the data plan or the ISP at the other end of a Wi-Fi connection. Adam Foxton's excellent point continues to apply.

        4. gnasher729 Silver badge

          Re: Age verification

          “ Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to the mobile phones that so many have glued to the end of their arms from a very early age. I don't know how to fix that.”

          It would be easy to create an interface where you take your phone and ID to a shop, they enter your identity and date of birth in a cryptographically secure way, a website can ask whether you are 18 or 21 or 12 or 65, and your phone truthfully says “yes” or “no”. Without passing any other information.

          Then make it illegal to give a phone that has your age to someone younger. So if a 13 year old is found with a phone saying it’s owner is 23, ghen someone is in trouble.

        5. eamonn_gaffey

          Re: Age verification

          "Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to the mobile phones that so many have glued to the end of their arms from a very early age. I don't know how to fix that."

          Generation(s) are growing up addicted to internet face time ("(anti) social media" etc.) via mobile devices (I predict that in several generations, babies will be born with a clasp shaped hand that neatly fits a mobile. :-) ). The future population are being groomed almost from birth by big tech to part with control of their data and their lives. This is the real issue, of which access to porn is but one facet.

        6. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

          Re: Age verification

          Both Android and iPhones have built on controls! It'as up to parents to use them!

      2. Greybearded old scrote

        Re: Age verification

        Why are you blaming His Beigeness? It was that other clown show that passed the law.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Age verification

        A mate of mine has the attitude with their kids that they have a Doro 780X each that they can call the parents and school and that’s it. If they want to have another phone that does more exciting things and credit on that phone then they have to pay for it themselves. He has locked down the wifi and they can only use the school supplied kit on that, which is in itself locked down. They can earn money by doing designated jobs around the house themselves and wash neighbours cars, paper rounds etc. He says if they’ve earned the money they can spend it how they like and has had a chat about what they view online with them including porn, but other than that they are of the opinion that boys will be boys.

        1. JT_3K

          Re: Age verification

          Arguably this is the way. I draw some parallels to when I was a lad in the early 90s however. Removal of my ability to watch a number of popular TV shows of the time because of parental concerns of violence and poor role-modelling (and a lack of interest in football) arguably snowballed from being left out of playground games to a rift between myself and other classmates, and ultimately a harder childhood later down the line. A good (school) year of being unable to take part in games centred around cartoons which are now fondly remembered as cult-classics ultimately left me some distance removed and this didn't resolve as the same children progressed to high school.

          In a similar way, whilst protecting children from "the horrors of the internet" is important, without access to the cultural content of the era, they'll struggle to properly fit with their classmates. No, I don't trust many social media platforms and worry about the long-term impact of increasingly short-form content on pre-teens. I'm also aware that occasional curated content can be great to share with a child, and that as they reach secondary school, their friends will gain access.

          It's also important also to teach that age the important ability to use the internet, to research, comprehend and apply, and embed the criticality of good internet hygiene as a formative idea. My child has a tablet with a whitelist. In a few years, that'll change to a blacklist and a dedicated SSID with a gateway device. At some point I'll have to take off the brakes and give full access. I'd rather do that in a controlled and graceful manner than flicking an on-off switch when they hit some arbitrary legal age.

          As someone has already pointed out, before the heady days of the internet, material such as the Anarchist's Cookbook and naked people were circulated in print, floppy disk or in the case of the latter, playing card form and disks even be bought from a local market. Kids will find a way and I'd rather to some extent that it was safer and less illegal than some of the early compute antics that, allegedly, could have been done in my era. Yes, an image of a naked person is one thing, but the dark corners of the web get much darker than that and if you're looking in those areas, you'll get exposed to both.

    2. hoola Silver badge

      Re: Age verification

      That assumes that the only person using that ISP connection is the contract owner.

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge

        Re: Age verification

        No, it does not. It assumes that the contract owner is indeed the owner and in control of the connection and can decide who uses it.

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: Age verification

          Surely you aren't missing that they don't want it to be your decision whether you choose to grant access to underage people. The religious nuts want to make it impossible for minors to access and as difficult as possible for everyone. The control freaks want to be able to dictate who can access what and when. The privacy rapists want to know who is accessing what and when. The three groups come together in an unholy alliance for stuff like this, and they laugh at the idea that you should be able to determine who can use your internet connection without them having any say.

      2. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: Age verification

        So make it a "neglectful parenting" offence to allow your kids full access - ISPs should, if they don't already, ask if there are under-18s present at the home, and recommend parental control filters, MAC-whitelisting etc. If you willfully ignore that and allow your kids to access porn sites, then it should be Your fault.

        1. TRT

          Re: Age verification

          This.

        2. ChoHag Silver badge

          Re: Age verification

          My ISP has no right to know what goes on in my home beyond the IP packets I send it.

          ISPs *may*, not should, if they are responsible, ask the person with whom they make the contract if that person would *like* help securing their home network against the myriad threats that the internet is full of.

        3. WanderingHaggis

          Re: Age verification

          I get what you are saying but we still have a problem of the clueless parent who doesn't know how to set up a firewall blacklist and doesn't have the tech skills to "protect" his connection (that is why modems no longer ship with a standard password or default ssid). So either he hires someone to come in and set it all up or else the ISP modems have blacklisting by default and the parent has to have the tech skills to make holes in the black listing thus unskilled parents can't access porn. However, no doubt the average teen is probably skilled enough to overcome the blocks with out the clueless parent being aware. This is why the home solution will not work.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Age verification

            I get what you are saying but we still have a problem of the clueless parent who doesn't know how to set up a firewall blacklist and doesn't have the tech skills to "protect" his connection (that is why modems no longer ship with a standard password or default ssid). So either he hires someone to come in and set it all up or else the ISP modems have blacklisting by default and the parent has to have the tech skills to make holes in the black listing thus unskilled parents can't access porn. However, no doubt the average teen is probably skilled enough to overcome the blocks with out the clueless parent being aware. This is why the home solution will not work.

            You can make it easier by having an Idiots and an experts route when setting up the wifi/internet. The Idiots guide tells you what to do in fool proof steps. The expert one is designed for those of us who are supposed to know what we’re doing. The Velop routers have something like that setup and not using it is quite difficult for the novice.

        4. Caspian Prince

          Re: Age verification

          Either you have never had kids, or you are so remarkably naive as to think your kids are angels who would never do such a thing.

      3. hoola Silver badge

        Re: Age verification

        To all those downvoting have you actually read the original statement "My ISP already knows how old I am, and so allows me to access "adult" sites. Why should anyone else need to do age verification on me?"

        Everything there is aligned with the contract holder as "I". There is no mention of any other user and how the contract holder then manages age verification.

        What you are all stating is that the responsibility of age verification has now passed to the contract holder - something that as we already see is even more difficult to enforce and huge numbers simply don't care.

        Far too many children have Social Media accounts that parents either endorse or simply don't care. Responsible parents (likely a minority) will already have controls in place.

        1. TRT

          Re: Age verification

          There's already a requirement for ISPs to BY DEFAULT block porn sites and ONLY enable them upon specific request from the account holder. They usually do this by way of a web portal for controls accessed by way of a password. BUT a parent who DOESN'T know a thing about the internet and gives the password to the kids to sort out problems is being negligent. An improved system, say 2FA to the adult's phone and text/email notification of settings changes, might be a better system than current. Certainly better than the opt in at a site level!

    3. katrinab Silver badge
      Childcatcher

      Re: Age verification

      It knows how old you are. It doesn't know how old the person using your internet connection is. Children often have access to their parents' internet connection.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        Re: Age verification

        So it's the responsibility of their parents to monitor their use. Not the responsibility of the ISP, nor the website, and certainly not the government.

      2. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: Age verification

        Yes, and my child only has the access I permit them to have.

        Sadly most parental controls available are shockingly bad - eg we've deleted several apps we've decided are inappropriate from the TV - but it keeps reinstalling them automatically!

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: Age verification

          Sadly most parental controls available are shockingly bad - eg we've deleted several apps we've decided are inappropriate from the TV - but it keeps reinstalling them automatically!

          Ah yes, iPlayer springs to mind. Like others have said, instead of this nonsense, what is needed are decent parental controls, and parental responsibility. If parents want their kids to have mobile phones, buy KidSIM contracts. If parents want a 'trusted' computer for their kids, get one with Win11 Kids Edition. If kids are smart enough to jailbreak their phones, or install Linux, tag them for future employment.

          MS, AlphaGoo & Apple dominate the home market, so only 3 companies who's butts need kicking (possibly on PPV, NSFW). Instead, 'government' has decided to impose an insecure mess on a large slab of largely already untrusted peddlers of porn, and other malware. It'll also do nothing to stop kids spreading some of the most harmful images, ie pics of their school kids that can be rapidly circulated between themselves, and then the wider world, and the Internet never forgets.

        2. katrinab Silver badge
          Alert

          Re: Age verification

          If your child is anything like me, I'm sure they are very good at making you think they only have the access you permit them to have.

          Of course they will also have no problems whatsoever in getting round any government mandated restrictions.

          On another note, I'm told that 1 year-old me was much better at opening "child-proof" locks than my parents were

          1. Andy The Hat Silver badge

            Re: Age verification

            Does this mean age verification is required to watch Youtube because of all the "tool improvement" adverts that are doing the rounds at the moment or do they ban Youtube, which is used by millions of teachers for valid material, because the kids may be exposed to tool tips ...?

    4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Gimp

      "My ISP already knows how old I am"

      Excellent point.

      The last "Child Exploitation & Sexualisation" Tsar the clod Cameron put in charge of this didn't like this approach probably because she couldn't figure out how to put parent access control on her browser.

      Note the default position of British Civil Servants when they are asked to deal with these sorts of matters. This subtly reinforces the "Honestly, this would not be a problem if we just had a National ID card scheme (with cradle-to-grave tracking database in the back end, as TB wanted)"

      Require the maximum amount of information to be disclosed.

      Meanwhile will Tiktok/Facebook/X/whoever face any penalty for hosting pron?

      Requiring browser downloads to have parental controls enabled by default? Making for-profit access to the internet without blocking access to age-sensitive sites a criminal offence? Requiring UK ISP to confirm you are the subscriber ? All (more or less) possible and less draconian. But don't look anywhere near the

      There is an old saying that "Politician seek to elevate prejudices to polices," IOW they make their problems our problems.

      Meanwhile after the seven yearinvestigation of child rape gangs done done Alexis Jay of real harm done to children IRL of 1000s (literally) how many of it's 20 recommendations have been carried out? It's said that none of them have but OK it was delivered the day (10/10/22?) Liz Truss threw in the towel but honestly, so f**king what? 7 yrs in the making. I'm guessing some of them would cost money but at least a few should have been fairly low hanging fruit.

      Perhaps they could start by reminding all serving British police officers of 7 things.

      1) The Age of Consent in the UK is 16. 2)If <16 you are a child 3)Children cannot give consent 4)The legal term for having sex with a child <16 is "Statutory rape" 5)Statutory rape is a crime.6)Adults accused of having sex (with or without force) with a child are rapists. 7)The term for children who've had sex with adults is survivor.

      The failure of multiple police forces to tackle the same pattern points to a systemic failure of the police mindset, which says some very nasty things about the PoV of a lot of officers. The IOPC investigation (in which one of their investigators was recommended to investigate one of the whistle blowers) and failed to find any senior officer involved in ignoring these allegations) looks to have been quite ineffective.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "My ISP already knows how old I am"

        >Meanwhile will Tiktok/Facebook/X/whoever face any penalty for hosting pron?

        Under the Online Safety Bill 2023, the maximum penalty for websites not complying with their part of the law is £18m or 10% of global revenue. For X that is somewhere around £100 million and falling, and for Facebook potentially £1bn.

        >1) The Age of Consent in the UK is 16. 2)If <16 you are a child 3)Children cannot give consent 4)The legal term for having sex with a child <16 is "Statutory rape" 5)Statutory rape is a crime.6)Adults accused of having sex (with or without force) with a child are rapists. 7)The term for children who've had sex with adults is survivor.

        Nobody under the age of 18 would be prosecuted for statuatory rape in the UK despite it being illegal - unless there was clear evidence of coercion or force. It would not be deemed within the public interest to prosecute a 16 year old girl who slept with her 15 year old long-term boyfriend (or vice versa).

        >Meanwhile after the seven yearinvestigation of child rape gangs done done Alexis Jay of real harm done to children IRL of 1000s (literally) how many of it's 20 recommendations have been carried out? It's said that none of them have but OK it was delivered the day (10/10/22?) Liz Truss threw in the towel but honestly, so f**king what? 7 yrs in the making. I'm guessing some of them would cost money but at least a few should have been fairly low hanging fruit.

        Some of the recommendations were in the Childrens and Welfare Bill that went through Parliament last week. The one that Elon Musk, the Tories & Reform tried to wreck by adding an amendment forcing another national inquiry but containing a clause that would reject the bill while making Labour look bad for trying to improve things for all children. Others are included in a bill that is currently being drafted and will be introduced in the next few months, I would expect the majority of the recommendations to be implemented within the next couple of years.

      2. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: "My ISP already knows how old I am"

        6)Adults accused of having sex (with or without force) with a child are rapists.

        No, adults *CONVICTED* of having sex with a child are rapists. A person accused, of *ANYTHING*, is a person accused, *NOT* a criminal.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "My ISP already knows how old I am"

          No, adults who have had sex with children are rapists. If caught and convicted then they are convicted rapists.

          1. Fred Dibnah

            Re: "My ISP already knows how old I am"

            Downvoted you for ignoring the word ‘accused’ in point 6.

          2. Wellyboot Silver badge

            Re: "My ISP already knows how old I am"

            While you are correct with your statement - the O.P. Point 6 said 'accused' and JG pointed out the legal position pre conviction.

            In the UK we have accusations to be proved correct not denunciations to be proved wrong.

            1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
              Unhappy

              Re: "My ISP already knows how old I am"

              I am the OP for this comment and I'm upvoting all of you.

              You are quite correct that until you're convicted it's only an accusation. Fair point. OTOH what of the "Yes I did have sex with a minor but it was consensual, and the jury agrees and acquits?"

              Keeping in mind that as a minor "consent" is impossible by definition. They might not be found guilty but they have committed statutory rape. *

              The case looked at in the Alexis Jay report were multiple girls (not "Young women") accusing multiple men and a gradually rising pattern ranging from flattery and small gifts up to physical violence.

              I'd suggest any honest, competent police officer hearing that story repeatedly would be thinking "This looks like a pattern"

              *Matt "school" Gaetz would probably be in this category. He's never been charged and daddy could probably hire a good enough legal team to keep him out of jail.

    5. Rogerborg 2.0
      Alert

      Re: Age verification

      Your ISP knows how old the account holder is, not each person using that account.

    6. sabroni Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: Age verification

      You want every company in the world to be able to access your ISPs customer database?

      But that is surely a privacy nightmare!

  3. theOtherJT Silver badge

    Here we go again...

    These people just don't learn, do they?

    You can't legislate this problem.

    Let's imagine that some other state - let's say China - legislates that all websites hosted in the UK prevent Chinese citizens from accessing news that's not in accordance with the values of China. We would, of course, say "No." and that would be the end of it. China would be left to enforce any rules it wanted to apply at the ISP end inside the boundaries of their own country. Like, you know, they actually do.

    So now lets imagine what happens when the British government tells a website based in some other jurisdiction to censor content - never mind what content it is or if you agree that it should be censored. What do we think will happen? They'll say "No." and we'll be left in exactly the same situation where either we block it at the ISP level in this country - at which point everyone simply VPN's around it - or put this utterly stupid idea down for another decade... you know, like we did last time when it became totally apparent within about a week that it wasn't going to work.

    The only thing this might achieve is to convince porn sites to relocate their operations outside of the UK, which I guess one might make a moral argument for if one gives a shit about porn, which I don't think the vast majority of people actually do these days, but from an economic standpoint is hardly a win at a time when we're supposed to be all about growth.

    1. Captain Hogwash Silver badge

      Re: all about growth

      snigger

    2. blackcat Silver badge

      Re: Here we go again...

      It reminds me of the Elton John 'scandal' where the press in England and Wales could not mention names but in Scotland it was fine. The 'super injunction' only covered England and Wales and not everywhere else on the planet.

      In the US certain cities have soda taxes so everyone just goes outside the affected area to buy cheap soda.

      Do people not learn from King Canute the Great?

      1. KittenHuffer Silver badge
        Headmaster

        Re: Here we go again...

        What a lot of people don't know is that Canute (or Cnut) was actually trying to show his courtiers that he wasn't all powerful.

        So many people believe that he thought he was all powerful, and that he thought that this gave him to power to stop the tides.

        ---------> I still think he looks like Mark Labbett!

        1. werdsmith Silver badge

          Re: Here we go again...

          Also, many people don’t know that he was dyslexic and when he gave his name to the monks to record, he misspelled slightly.

          1. Zoopy

            Re: Here we go again...

            Gavina?

            1. MrDamage

              Re: Here we go again...

              Oh, it's Dolores!

          2. khjohansen

            Re: Here we go again...

            Well I guess the monks did their best to "frenchify" Knud!

        2. blackcat Silver badge

          Re: Here we go again...

          The problem is that celebs and politicians really do think they are all powerful.

        3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Whacko

          It's Jimmy Edwards.

          As to your main point, yes, but although he might have taught his court a lesson the knowledge died with them, a millennium ago.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Here we go again...

      @theOtherJT

      Quote: "...some other state - let's say China - legislates that all websites hosted in the UK prevent Chinese citizens..."

      Define "Chinese citizens"! Maybe "Chinese citizens" using a VPN so they appear to be surfing in, say, Bulgaria!!

      How is that going to work?

      Or an irresponsible parent surfing porn.....leaves the session open....and a twelve year old child just picks up where "Dad" left off?

      Dream on....about "age verification"....or "citizenship verification".....or indeed any other sort of "verification"!!!

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Where Is Ron White When You Need Him?

      @theOtherJT

      ...."No Cure For Stupid!".....available on YouTube.....no age or citizenship verification needed!!!!!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Where Is Ron White When You Need Him?

        Where is Ron Jeremy when you need him?

        1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

          Re: Where Is Ron White When You Need Him?

          Where is Ron Jeremy when you need him?

          Given that he's got severe dementia, he's probably asking himself the same question.

    5. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: Here we go again...

      It's also likely that the more responsible, and tame, porn sites will be the ones which heed this, and so become less available to minors.

      The more extreme sites will ignore the rules, or just pay lip service to them, and so will still be available. That's going to have exactly the opposite effect to the desired one, the kids will only be able to see the worst sort of content.

      1. UnknownUnknown

        Re: Here we go again...

        The sites with content - of all sorts - to harm children inc Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok, X etc …

    6. JimboSmith

      Re: Here we go again...

      The only thing this might achieve is to convince porn sites to relocate their operations outside of the UK, which I guess one might make a moral argument for if one gives a shit about porn, which I don't think the vast majority of people actually do these days, but from an economic standpoint is hardly a win at a time when we're supposed to be all about growth.

      After the extreme porn law came in a few UK based and owned fetish sites transferred their ownership nominally to a US citizen. In Scotland they have more draconian restrictions on smut but and this is the fun part, they won’t even tell you what constitutes extreme smut.

      https://www.theregister.com/2011/01/25/ignorance_of_scottish_pr0n_law_no_defence/

      A spokesman told us: "We do not publicly disclose our prosecution policy in relation to specific offences as to do so may allow offenders to adapt or restrict their behaviour to conduct which falls short of our prosecution threshold."

  4. Chris Fox

    Impact on self-hosting and private services?

    To what extent would these expectations apply to self-hosted services, like email and XMPP servers, Nextcloud etc. where, in theory, a user might share/send/download something inappropriate? Does this mean that some key reasons for self-hosting (privacy, security, and freedom from third-party content scanning etc.) are thrown under a bus? I.e. to comply with this, and other online 'safety' requirements, is there an expectation that everyone has to engage in age verification and/or content scanning or else give up on independence and allow all their services and data to be assimilated by some mega-corporation? Asking for a friend.

    1. Captain Hogwash Silver badge

      Re: Impact on self-hosting and private services?

      Don't give them ideas. Is your server open to the public? If not then you're probably fine.

    2. Fonant

      Re: Impact on self-hosting and private services?

      If you're a "user-to-user" service, with UK users, you have to assess your risk.

      https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/quick-guide-to-childrens-access-assessments/

      Stage 1: Is it possible for children to access your service? (YES, unless you have strong age verification).

      Satge 2: Are there significant numbers of children using, or could be attracted to use, your service? If so, perform a child access risk assessment. If not, you're OK.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Impact on self-hosting and private services?

        Tho you won't know what type of age assurance Ofcom will want yet until April.

        https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/important-dates-for-online-safety-compliance/

        1. Mrs Spartacus

          Re: Impact on self-hosting and private services?

          I'm sure everything will work out fine. I mean, following years of various checks for bladed objects, its now impossible for teenagers to get their hands on a machete in London....

          1. Like a badger

            Re: Impact on self-hosting and private services?

            Same with the onerous and pointless money laundering rules.

            But that's not the point. The purpose of introducing some new rules is not to fix anything, it is simply for bunglement to say "look what we did".

            1. PB90210 Silver badge

              Re: Impact on self-hosting and private services?

              "onerous and pointless money laundering rules."

              'There are rules?!?' said a HSBC spokesdroid

    3. catprog

      Re: Impact on self-hosting and private services?

      Do you only give out access to people you know?

      i.e do you already have effective age verification by default?

  5. Mentat74
    Thumb Down

    Why don't we test if our politicians are "highly effective"...

    And let their salaries be dependent on it...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Like anyone would give their true ID to a porn site that could then track all their "views" !

    That's ripe for hackers and blackmailers.

    Since when was the internet "made for kids" anyway? If they really want kids to not see naked titties, they need to control the kids access to the internet, not the adults.

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      I'm quite happy for them to know that my real identity is Keir Starmer!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'm Kemi Badenoch and so's my husband.

    2. Bebu sa Ware
      Coat

      If they really want kids to not see naked titties

      Then they must ensure the kiddywinks are bottle fed. ;)

      Rather than the rest of us.

      Did they ever have the breast is best campaign in England? Hard to imagine so.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. ChoHag Silver badge
      Pint

      > If they really want kids to not see naked titties

      Also don't feed them.

      Because despite what we men may think, breasts are first and foremost a source of food and one which damn near everyone has had their face all over.

      > Since when was the internet "made for kids" anyway?

      Are you saying you *don't* want the internet turned into a kindergarten? -->

    4. alain williams Silver badge

      Like anyone would give their true ID to a porn site that could then track all their "views" !

      That's ripe for hackers and blackmailers.

      They appear to be doing it already - only yesterday I received an email from someone who claimed that they had control of my Windows PC and had seen the porn sites that I was visiting. They would inform my wife, etc, unless I paid them 10 bitcoin.

      I thought that I had better pay up until I remembered that my PC runs Debian and that I am not married!

  7. Andy 73 Silver badge

    Shafted three ways...

    So now in the UK:

    If you want to go online and be treated like an adult you must hand over your credit card (don't worry it will be safe).

    If you want to provide online services to your community, you must have legal advice and multi-million pound insurance cover.

    If you share anything online, it may be taken and reproduced by any interested party with no respect to copyright whatsoever.

    Yeah, it's going great, isn't it?

    1. Ken G Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Shafted three ways...

      good points, but where's the link to the video you mention in your comment title?

      1. maffski

        Re: Shafted three ways...

        I'm happy to provide the video in question, just enter your credit card details for age verification.

        1. Mrs Spartacus

          Re: Shafted three ways...

          Hang on, I'll just go and get dad's credit card that he hides in his sock drawer. Three ways you say? Oh goody.

    2. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: Shafted three ways...

      Don't forget, if you want to sell a piece of art you painted in Europe for £10, thanks to Brexit, you now have to pay someone in Europe for years after the sale to be your point of contact.

      1. maffski

        Re: Shafted three ways...

        It's not due to Brexit. It's due to the EU. Someone in Thailand would also need an EU point of contact.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Shafted three ways...

          Doh. Re-read what you just wrote....

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Shafted three ways...

          It IS due directly to Brexit. If we were still in the EU, this requirement wouldn't apply in the UK.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bang goes social media

    and youtube, insta, tiktok etc and many other things that can show "harmful" content

    Gonna be fun watching them police all of that

    1. Joe W Silver badge

      Re: Bang goes social media

      Not a great loss....

      1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

        Re: Bang goes social media

        Actually I'd have said that was a great gain!

    2. UnknownUnknown

      Re: Bang goes social media

      and ArtUK and Wayfair…. And many others.

      https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/hylas-and-the-nymphs-206346

  9. CorwinX

    Surely it's already in place at the comms provider

    When mine brought in an "Adult Content" filter I had to make a request to have it turned off.

    As usual, it's politicians "solving" non-problems to grab headlines because they don't know how to fix things that actually matter to people.

    1. Lazlo Woodbine Silver badge

      Re: Surely it's already in place at the comms provider

      Mine does that, but it was already off when I checked, so I suppose it's an opt-in filter, which it should be

      1. ibmalone

        Re: Surely it's already in place at the comms provider

        Most ISPs I've dealt with in the last few years you have to turn parental controls off, I've often found this is necessary to use the VPN for work. The most recent one I did this with was Three for mobile broadband and there a proof of ID was needed to allow the switch (what access to a credit card number actually proves is anyone's guess). I think for mobile phone providers it's a requirement for this to be in place, not sure about landline-based broadband, or maybe if your account predates that then the setting remains off.

        The control isn't really granular enough as a result to be that useful for protecting children online for home broadband, only really in the case of a personal mobile device.

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Re: Surely it's already in place at the comms provider

          "you have to turn parental controls off, I've often found this is necessary to use the VPN for work."

          That's what you told the missus, anyway!

  10. IGnatius T Foobar !

    The end of pr0n in UK

    Proving your age requires proving your identity. There is no other way. This is basically the end of pr0n in the UK. More importantly, it's the end of anonymity. In the end, however, the internet always finds a way. Sites which are best viewed with anonymity are going to have to move to a friendlier hosting country ... or even onto a darknet. There are more people going on darknets now for just that reason.

    1. heyrick Silver badge
      Facepalm

      This is basically the end of pr0n in the UK.

      No, it's the end of legal porn. People who really want it will find it, just like they did before the internet was even a thing. I'm sure you can spot the obvious problem with that...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: This is basically the end of pr0n in the UK.

        Well that if Ofcom does not backtrack and delay this at the last min and there also likely to be judicial reviews and legal challenges to this seeing its a huge privacy and legal nightmare.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: This is basically the end of pr0n in the UK.

        >No, it's the end of legal porn. People who really want it will find it, just like they did before the internet was even a thing. I'm sure you can spot the obvious problem with that...

        Running electricity and fibre to a hedge in the woods so you can find other peoples discarded porn?

    2. Lazlo Woodbine Silver badge

      Re: The end of pr0n in UK

      Back in the day you used to go through a grubby curtain at the back of a book store for the more niche products.

      I fully expect Amazon to introduce a grubby curtain Easter Egg to their site, one they can monetise, obviously...

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: The end of pr0n in UK

        I think it already exists and it’s called a VPN.

        I use one to access French mainstream TV channels so I can maintain my comprehension orale compétence. No, that’s not any kind of entendre.

        These TV channels are supposed to be geo-bound to France for whatever contractual reason, but accessing them with a VPN and the postcode of a Carrefour in Lille is child’s play.

      2. IanRS

        Re: The end of pr0n in UK

        Expect? It is already there.

        https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?node=2758315031&ref=sr_ex_n_1

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The end of pr0n in UK

          No dolls

    3. Long John Silver
      Pirate

      Re: The end of pr0n in UK

      Porn production depends largely upon income from sales or, indirectly, via subjecting its viewers to advertising. Darknets, at least at present, don't present fertile ground for commerce.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: The end of pr0n in UK

        I hate to be the one to break it to you, but "Commerce" is why the so-called darknet exists at all.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Talking heads

    Talking bollocks to impress other talking heads.

    Mind the gap.

  12. MisterHappy

    Google & Bing too?

    Will search engines be expected to conform with this?

    Safesearch off + naughty terms + show images... Oh no, porn without verification.

    As usual, a badly thought out substitute for basic parental responsibility.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Google & Bing too?

      On random occasions I've found that it's impossible to switch off Safesearch with some message about it being controlled by your network administrator.

      ISPs practicing ahead of implementing the legislation?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Google & Bing too?

      In my experience, you can get some extremely unsafe things even with safe search turned on.

      1. stiine Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Google & Bing too?

        If you try hard enough.

  13. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    The solution depends on the problem

    If the problem was children accessing adult material then the solution would be a .kids.uk domain. Restrict children to subdomains of that domain and ensure their are legal consequences for putting adult material on that corner of the internet.

    Conversely the problem can be inferred from the solution: the UK lacks a great firewall of China.

    1. Bebu sa Ware
      Coat

      Re: The solution depends on the problem

      UK lacks a great firewall of China.

      One can only begin to imagine the enormity of the resulting cockup if the current clowns were to implement the Great British Firewall which would probably have to draw the line down the Irish sea err... because of another G.B. cockup.

      I really don't think prepubertal children would be anything other than bored by the general run of stereotyped non violent erotica but I think teenagers at the beginning of their sexual life are more at risk from exposure to inappropriate behaviours and unrealistic expectations portrayed in this material but who are also the ones that are more likely to have the knowledge to circumvent any of these types of restrictions.

      In this latter case the answer is, as it will always be, sex and relationship education with open and frank discussion of these matters between parents and their offspring.

      Clearly they hadn't buried Mary Whitehouse deep enough as it would appear her unpacified spirit is abroad animating the soulless legislators of the realm.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The solution depends on the problem

        "but who are also the ones that are more likely to have the knowledge to circumvent any of these types of restrictions."

        I was going to say that - the kids who are meant to be blocked (and actively want to see the material) are the same ones who have the best understanding of how to circumvent the block. The overall result of the change will be almost nothing with respect to underage viewing but a field day for scammers who now have a new vein of user data to mine...

        1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
          Boffin

          Re: The solution depends on the problem

          It's almost as if every person alive to day wasn't the direct descendant of x thousand generations of ancestors, each and every one of whom had at least _some_ interest in sex. Perhaps it's genetic?

      2. Art Slartibartfast

        Re: The solution depends on the problem

        Yes indeed, on-line pornography can create unrealistic expectations, such as that when you call you can have a plumber at your house within 30 minutes.

    2. Long John Silver
      Pirate

      Re: The solution depends on the problem

      It would be amusing to watch the current, or any other, British government attempt the introduction of a 'National Firewall'. There would be impassioned debate. MPs would vie with each other to be seen to make a contribution. The eventual 'cocked-up' legislation would be as risible as earlier efforts here and in the USA to control the use of encryption.

      Each of restricting encryption and firewall blockades are mooted as 'protecting the children'. If they could be implemented, they might protect children to some degree, but the underlying motivations (e.g. surveillance and political censorship) provide the true incentive.

      1. PB90210 Silver badge

        Re: The solution depends on the problem

        The government would need to include an exemption for 'tractor porn'...

  14. Tron Silver badge

    I hope those VPN services have beefed up their capacity.

    If the VPN doesn't cut it, it will be time to shift away from the mainstream services and go back to the dodgy image boards.

    A lot of people have been staying sane after the shitshow of Brexit and Covid using social media. If they want to keep their details secure, that will no longer be an option, so they will all be a lot more isolated.

    Everyone moans about Google. Now they will have to do without Google Search if they want to keep their personal details secure.

    And as this is being brought in by Labour, they will carry the can, and become as hated by the electorate as the Tories were, pretty much overnight.

    It will be interesting to see if porn mags make a comeback. They pretty much vanished in the UK when the net came along. Probably a boost for sex workers too, as folk switch back to the real deal.

    I wonder if teenagers will switch back to the real deal too? Maybe a spike in teen pregnancies incoming. Some Brits may be becoming grandparents sooner than they expected.

    For those of you having a laugh at our Nazi overlords treating us all like kids, this Stasi-like state ID grab is coming to you soon too.

    1. Bebu sa Ware
      Coat

      Re: I hope those VPN services have beefed up their capacity.

      «It will be interesting to see if porn mags make a comeback. They pretty much vanished in the UK when the net came along. Probably a boost for sex workers too, as folk switch back to the real deal.»

      «I wonder if teenagers will switch back to the real deal too? Maybe a spike in teen pregnancies incoming. Some Brits may be becoming grandparents sooner than they expected.»

      Both growth but not quite what the current regime had in mind I suspect.

      Once the snake oil merchant realise that AI isn't much use for anything else I am certain the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation will market an affordable† "plastic gal* who is fun to be with."

      Actually to recreate in the plastic proxy the activities portrayed on porntube you could probably run the required LLM and generate the audio and motions involved on a Raspberry Pi 5.

      †I am sure Dyson too could produce a really great ride but then it also wouldn't be affordable. *or guy etc etc

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I hope those VPN services have beefed up their capacity.

      > It will be interesting to see if porn mags make a comeback. They pretty much vanished in the UK when the net came along.

      Nah. There are a couple of obvious reasons why they won't, and why they (mostly) died in the first place.

      Firstly, online porn has the major advantage that it doesn't require you to skulk around paper shops, wait until no other customers are around and even then still have to deal with whoever's serving behind the counter knowing that you want to buy a w*** mag. (And- depending upon how big a deal that is- what sort of stuff you like to w*** to).

      I doubt anyone back in the day would have done that out of choice. I can't even begin to imagine how much worse a prospect that would be to your already-personal-contact-phobic present day Gen Z-er.

      Secondly, those magazines- along with pretty much anything that was legal in the UK back then- were lukewarm softcore shite barely a step up from "Page 3" with little explicit of interest happening beyond nudity. Barely even "porn" by most modern standards.

      Also, they all seemed to share broadly the same "look", a stereotypical, low-rent cheesy "glamour" aesthetic. Fine if that's your thing, boring if it isn't.

      That said, they're still around- while I was in the queue at a local paper shop a year or two back, I noticed they were still selling them and wondered *who* was buying them these days. Then again, I suspect there are still a number of tech-phobic older customers from back in the day who don't know how to get it via the Internet, find it too much hassle or are simply fixated on that, er, means of doing it. I don't think the next ironic retro tech revival among Gen Z is going to be lame old w*** mags, but then, stranger things have happened.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I hope those VPN services have beefed up their capacity.

      >And as this is being brought in by Labour, they will carry the can, and become as hated by the electorate as the Tories were, pretty much overnight.

      I'm not entirely sure we can blame Labour for the Online Safety Bill 2023 - which was brought to Parliament by the now unemployed Michelle Donelan, former Tory Minister for Business, Innovation & Technology. Once it had Royal Assent, I don't think there is a way to stop it coming into life.

      1. Scotech

        Re: I hope those VPN services have beefed up their capacity.

        Indeed. If one were feeling especially cynical, you might suspect that the whole reason much of the responsibility for enforcement was pushed to Ofcom, an arms-length quango, was precisely so that the incoming Labour administration wouldn't be able to let it wither on the vine while getting on with stuff that actually protects kids, like implementing the recommendations from the child sex abuse scandal. I'm not saying that Labour don't do performative politics, but the stunt the Tories pulled on that Bill last week was particularly low, even by their recent standards. To then have the temerity to say that they're the real champions of children's safety because of crap like this beggars belief.

  15. Ken G Silver badge
    Trollface

    Blow into the bag, simples!

    We just need to link an electronic breathalyser to the computer and have the user blow in it to prove they've been drinking before accessing porn.

    Since alcohol can only be sold to over 18's in the UK, that will prove the pervert is old enough!

  16. imanidiot Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Why are we even letting children on the internet?

    Let's just ban anyone under 18 from the internet. That'll be far more effective.

  17. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I doubt it will even require an VPN to get around any block that Ofcom might implement. The pirate bay has been blocked in the UK for years, but the block is just done via DNS at your ISP which refuses to resolve the domain name to its IP address, but because I run my own Pi Hole all my devices use that for DNS and not my ISP DNS, i can still access it.

    So it wont take long for the kids to realise that just changing their DNS to use something like Cloudflare will probably allow them to get around any blocks.

    All this law is going to do is make it prohibitive for small UK adult content operators to continue to run their business from the UK.

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Blimey, does your ISP still get away with doing that?

      Most block it on the connection

      jamie@northway% curl -vv https://thepiratebay.org/

      * Trying [2606:4700:7::a29f:8906]:443...

      * Connected to thepiratebay.org (2606:4700:7::a29f:8906) port 443

      * ALPN: curl offers h2,http/1.1

      * TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):

      * CAfile: /usr/local/share/certs/ca-root-nss.crt

      * CApath: /usr/local/share/certs

      * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS alert, illegal parameter (559):

      * OpenSSL/3.1.4: error:0A000417:SSL routines::sslv3 alert illegal parameter

      * Closing connection

      curl: (35) OpenSSL/3.1.4: error:0A000417:SSL routines::sslv3 alert illegal parameter

      jamie@northway% curl -vv4 https://thepiratebay.org/

      * Trying 162.159.136.6:443...

      * Connected to thepiratebay.org (162.159.136.6) port 443

      * ALPN: curl offers h2,http/1.1

      * TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):

      * CAfile: /usr/local/share/certs/ca-root-nss.crt

      * CApath: /usr/local/share/certs

      * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS alert, illegal parameter (559):

      * OpenSSL/3.1.4: error:0A000417:SSL routines::sslv3 alert illegal parameter

      * Closing connection

      curl: (35) OpenSSL/3.1.4: error:0A000417:SSL routines::sslv3 alert illegal parameter

      1. Chz

        It's the same (DNS block only) on Community Fibre, which I imagine is hugely popular with any London-based readers here. Given that setting my DNS to something else is one of the first things I do on an ISP's new router I've never seen any of the pirate sites blocked. I actually set the router to 1.1.1.3 (for the kiddies) and 1.1.1.1/8.8.8.8 directly on any devices where I care about such things being blocked. I keep saying I should make a PiHole, but I never get a round tuit.

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Oh, thanks, that's interesting to know.

          I know at least Sky and talk-talk block by IP (not just IP, but I seem to recall they work on the SNI hostname part within the initial unencrypted part of the session)

      2. Excused Boots Silver badge

        To be honest, I doubt that any of them really want to get involved in any of this stuff, knowing that it’s fairly pointless and easily by-passed - but they are obliged to ‘block’, by Court order, certain sites, so they do the minimum that passes the ‘block’ test.

        If DNS poisoning suffices then fine. This is exactly how Virgin Media’s ‘Child-Safe’ filters work, (or don’t work, as this is about as effective and robust as a tissue-paper condom). But it lets them tick the box for having parental controls - even if if means that the parents can rest easy, safe in the knowledge that their child is fully protected from any ‘nastiness’ on the internet - although they can’t work out why 'little Timmy’ is going through an entire box of kleenex every two weeks!

        I believe though that for some site specifically ‘banned’ by Court order, then they do implement a sort of 'route poisoning’ approach. Something trivially bypassed via a VPN, but they’ve done their bit and it’s not their problem any more.

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          I totally agree - that's why I was surprised to see that at least Talk-Talk and Sky block on the IP (or SNI within the connection, if my memory is correct)

          I therefore assumed that they had been told that just DNS munging wouldn't suffice, so that's why I was surprised to hear that some still just alter the DNS.

          Thanks for the clarifications!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's an excuse to de-anonymise the Internet to stop dissent. This is step 1, next they'll say people are getting round it so they need to block VPN & Tor. China has showed the way.

      Add in CBDC and facial recognition ... voila we are China. Our governments want to treat us like cattle.

      1. Alumoi Silver badge

        Mushrooms, you mean. Kept in the dark and fed shit.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Verification? Did I Miss Something Along The Way?

    Jean Charles de Menezes: A Brazilian citizen shot (five times).......just going to work as usual.

    Equifax: hacked for three months (or was that three years?).......and petabytes of data exfiltrated.

    Royal Free Hospital: 1.6 million citizen health records handed over to DeepMind/Google: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/03/google-deepmind-16m-patient-royal-free-deal-data-protection-act

    Please....tell me that "verification" is REALLY a thing!!!

    Please....tell me that GDPR is NOT JUST A JOKE!!

    Please.....tell me that all this legislation (i.e. Online Safety Act) is not just a way that the elite (in SW1) pacify the citizens....people who vote and pay for the Westmister charade!!!!

  19. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    What is the official definition of

    Porn?

    There has to be one that can stand up in a court case?

    Will some of the more steamy works by Jilly Cooper and Barbara Cartland fall foul of this law?

    1. Ball boy Silver badge

      Re: What is the official definition of

      Interestingly, the written word is not considered pornographic content in English law. If the material is 'dirtier' than whatever the reader reasonably expected to encounter then it may fall into the category of being obscene - but 'pornographic'? Nope. Lady Chatterley's Lover was the first of three publications that set the precedents for this.

      However, the provider still has a duty of care not to expose a minor (or anyone, of any age, for that matter) to content that is defined as obscene so the OSA still applies.

      In such cases, there are three options: 1.) Before showing content, get informed consent from the user regarding the nature of the content AND implement some kind of age-verification gateway, dealing with all the attendant problems of potential ID theft / proving the service meets the standards and so on that this entails or; 2.) locate the service outside the UK and implement an IP geofence that denies visitors from the GB address block(s) from the site/service. Your final option - 3.) - is to do the relocation thing AND run the service from a business registered abroad, making sure there are no British-registered owners. At that point, the company and its offerings fall entirely outside the scope of the OSA and you can host what the hell you like (within the bounds of your host country/bitbarn, etc).

      It should be fairly obvious that I didn't learn all this just for the heck of it but I decline to offer a website as an example of option (2) being put into practice for fear it would pervert some readers. A shame: an El Reg backlink would do the site a wonderful service ;)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What is the official definition of

        If anyone can get a teenager to read "Lady Chatterley's Lover" it would be considered a win.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What is the official definition of

        This isn't about porn. This is step 1 in de-anonymising the Internet for the purpose of control. There are rafts of legislation going through under cover of stated good intentions. Our leaders do not like being questioned or their lies exposed. They also want absolute control of us. This is extremely dangerous to the people's democracy, not their democracy that they keep using as an excuse for war or other restrictions on freedom. E.g., who voted for councils to stop elections or "re-organise"? And if anyone gets the silly idea to vote for ending democracy just remember that's a one way vote. You don't get to choose a second time if you don't like it.

    2. Long John Silver
      Pirate

      Re: What is the official definition of

      As in the past, there will be 'make them up as one goes along' definitions, each cast widely, and each a candidate for jury nullification in court. 'Obscenity' trials have for a long time been a source of national amusement. Also, they indulge those people who enjoy 'riding a high horse'.

    3. ChoHag Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: What is the official definition of

      > What is the official definition of porn?

      "I'll know it when I see it"

      So let's have a looksee!

  20. Stoic Skeptic

    I guess it is a good time to be in the VPN business.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That'll be step 2; ban VPN.

      1. CAPS LOCK

        They won't ban VPN...

        ... you'l just have to get a licence from the Home Office. Oh and pay a fee...

  21. Law

    As a parent I'm much more concerned with how social media and content sites are allowed to manipulate kids (and adults) into doom scrolling for hours. Rather than being morally fixated on porn sites, there's far more harmful services like TikTok, twitter, youtube (shorts), facebook, etc. It'd be far easier (and beneficial) focusing on reducing algorithmic content delivery & limiting shortform video scrolling.

    Force large tech companies to include mandatory parental controls with the ability to turn off harmful features (I can't turn off youtube shorts on my teenages youtube account - despite having parental control). The large social networking sites have just shown that the next few years are going to be an unlimited slurry of misinformation and hateful content - lets focus on limiting damage from that first!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      In A Perfect World.......

      @Law

      Quote: "...Force large tech companies..."

      Really? They make A LOT of money! Some of the folding money (allegedly) gets stuffed in Fortnum & Mason bags...and goes to Westminster (or Windsor!)......I wonder why!!

      Dream on!

    2. ChrisElvidge Silver badge

      Ban the algorithms

      Ban the algorithms

      1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Alert

        Re: Ban the algorithms

        Oh no, a 3 word slogan. Before you realise, it'll be on be on a lecturn in Downing Street

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's the problem nailed.

      But they want doom scrolling and mindless young. Remember how the young would take to the streets over issues - very inconvenient.

  22. James O'Shea Silver badge

    So... which VPN are you going with?

    Hide My Ass? (I just _love_ the name...) or Nord? Or Cloudflare? Or a different one? There are so many to choose from. Or just set up my own, possibly with a Pi? Decisions, decisions...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So... which VPN are you going with?

      @James_O'Shea

      My favourite is SurfShark! But checking on my workstation, sometimes my IP address has not changed -- when it should be in Charlotte, USA.

      Other times, everything is OK!

      Beware..........not all VPNs actually do what they say on the tin!

      1. Long John Silver
        Pirate

        Re: So... which VPN are you going with?

        Yes, but one can consult sites which display the ISP address, DNS servers, and whatever is revealed about one's operating system and browser. The latter two can be obfuscated by other means.

    2. PRR Silver badge

      Re: So... which VPN are you going with?

      >which VPN are you going with? Hide My Ass? (I just _love_ the name...) or Nord? Or Cloudflare? Or a different one? There are so many to choose from.

      Smarter smut sites have a pre-site with tantalizingly cut-off videos and a sales pitch for Full Access. These will now include links for "recommended" VPN services in your area, known to connect to their services (and kick-back clerk). (Ideally on the same payment for convenience, but they may need to maintain Plausible Deniability.)

      1. gnasher729 Silver badge

        Re: So... which VPN are you going with?

        “Smarter smut sites have a pre-site with tantalizingly cut-off videos and a sales pitch for Full Access. These will now include links for "recommended" VPN services in your area, known to connect to their services (and kick-back clerk). (Ideally on the same payment for convenience, but they may need to maintain Plausible Deniability.)“

        As much as I hate this privacy destroying legislation, that smut side would be taken down in a second. They are required to verify your age. If they instead link you up to a VPN, then they are clearly _not_ verifying your age, with zero plausible deniability.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So... which VPN are you going with?

      https://airvpn.org

    4. Jake Maverick

      Re: So... which VPN are you going with?

      Hide my ass.....? that was shown to be a honey trap years ago set up by so called authorities.....

  23. NanoMeter

    Think of the kids, FFS.

    That's the standard phrase. I suppose that's the government's idea still.

    Children will learn fast, VPN is their answer. Even simpler, just install a TOR browser.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      For any kid struggling to install a VPN I assume ChatGPT and the like will give them guidance, along with answering any other question related to biology or anatomy.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Ye gods. Sex ed from ChatGPT is an absolutely terrifying thought.

        We all know what sort of thing is in the training material.

        1. Scotech

          Forget ChatGPT - we're all going to have AI PC's in the future, remember? So kids will be able to spin up a local model - trained on the darkest corners of the pre-censorship Interne and download from a country with looser laws around this stuff via VPN - and nobody will be any the wiser. Good luck legislating against that!

          The only way to regulate what kids see and do on their devices is for parents to do their jobs and pay attention. Tech isn't a nanny, and parents need to stop outsourcing their responsibilities to it instead of keeping an eye on their own children.

    3. Neil 44

      Exactly!

      Brave browser : new incognito window with TOR.

      Bob identifies as your uncle and I'm in Germany ( or Austria next time I connected)...

      It may even put me in the land of the free (unless you want TicToc!)

  24. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    FAIL

    Define

    porn.

    How about 2 adults having consensual sex? well thats on TV for a start. and films, and streaming shows.

    How about pictures of naked men and women? well thats quite a lot of art out of the window , from the sistine chapel downwards not forgetting the various depictions of Adam and Eve

    How about just plain nudity? define nudity for me.... whats legal and decent in the UK (such as Bournemouth beach in the summer) is not legal in other areas of the world.

    But all this is just a smokescreen.

    Once the pornography filters have been raised, we'd best not let the little ones see other violent content, such as wars , bombings, and protests against the government.

    In fact lets just fill the internet with fluffy pink spam so that kiddies wont see anything (nor anyone else for that matter) and can only access government approved content that reflects today's modern government as hard working and caring about the population.

    But its a shame because people are too embrassed to talk to their kids about sex on the internet. Mrs Roach and I had that talk telling the kids that what you see on the internet is staged, is made by actors who are highly paid for the performance(usually), and completely fake, I mean 2 women getting a plumber in to fix the sink and their instantly start removing clothes.... do you know how long it takes to get a plumber around here?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Define

      "I mean 2 women getting a plumber in to fix the sink and their instantly start removing clothes."

      Is that they type of thing they show? How did you know that? ;)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Define

        It's really distracting. Half the time the sink doesn't even leak, so I have no idea why I'm there.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Define

          No wonder we find it so hard to book a decent plumber, if they're all being hired by these women with a fetish for exposed hairy cracks...

          1. Persona Silver badge

            Re: Define

            From what I have heard you allegedly get paid a lot more for real plumbing work than being a male porn actor.

            BTW- I hate referring to actors and actresses in the adult film industry as porn stars. Rarely are they "stars".

  25. Jamesit

    Lower access to porn

    I read a report that said areas with less access to porn also had more assaults and sex crimes committed than areas with more porn access. I can't remember where I read it though, it might have been on El Reg, I'll see if I can find it.

    1. Jamesit

      Re: Lower access to porn

      I haven't been able to find the link yet, I'll do more searching I should have time Friday night.

      1. tiggity Silver badge

        Re: Lower access to porn

        @Jamesit

        An initial search gave this*

        https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178909000445

        I'm sure there are better sources out there, that was just the first hit on my query & busy so not wasting time looking at other results from taht search / refining search query.

        * Not sure why, but I tend to be good at constructing query prompts (be that to get useful results from search engines or to break an "AI")

  26. Captain Hogwash Silver badge
    Coat

    Re: pink spam

    Isn't that what this is about avoiding?

  27. Long John Silver
    Pirate

    Top shelf material?

    Is this proposal the present day equivalent to what happened long ago when 'naughty' magazines were placed on top shelves in newsagent shops?

  28. Art Slartibartfast

    Not a new issue

    Already back in 2008 Bruce Schneier identified many issues with on-line age verfication. For a good overview what the problems are see this recent article: https://www.eff.org/files/2024/10/15/ny_av_eff_comments.pdf

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Credit Card ID for access

    Baptismal certificate scanning upon exiting.

    That way the most appropriate sky chief can absolve you of your latest sins.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    LOL

    And you Brits made fun of Florida.

    See, _this_ is comedy.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ha ha

    Charade you are

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Discrimination against older people

    The only thing this is likely to do is prevent people over 18 from accessing porn, while teenagers will be unimpeded.

    When will adults stop thinking they can outsmart kids when it comes to technology?

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Leaders"

    WIll this include parliamentarians and councillors? They seem to have a remarkably high percentage of kiddie fiddlers. But I guess those sites wont be participating.

    Ignoring the stated intention, this is an attack on privacy and desire for absoloute control. This will do nothing unless they control the whole Internet, which of course is the real intention behind this. What they really want is to stop dissent to their lies. There are plenty of lists out there of government lies they called mis/dis information that turned out to be evidentially true. If this continues we will be getting knocks on the door for posts like this.

  34. GioCiampa
    FAIL

    Did you miss a part of Lina's quote?

    Surely it should have been "a perfect opportunity for us to make a fortune selling 'solutions' that won't work as well as we told them it will, but we'll still tell them that it's a pivotal moment in the fight to make the internet a safer place, particularly for children."

  35. Dave Null

    great for blackmail...

    ...access dodgy site, which knows who you are and exactly what you've been watching...

  36. Aging Hippy
    Stop

    It's the salesperson technique

    Step 1: Skip the dubious premise that nudity and pornography is bad for children but not for adults.

    Step 2: Start a discussion on how to limit pornography.

    Step 3: Premise from step 1 becomes true.

    In practice:

    Potential buyer "I don't know whether to buy a Ford or a VW."

    Ford Salesperson: "Would you prefer red or grey?"

    Buyer & partner discuss what colour they like best.

    Female buyer wins - and so does Ford Salesperson.

    [Note to reply-generator bots: this is not a discussion about cars]

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's the salesperson technique

      Ford Salesperson: "Would you prefer red or grey?"

      Me and the Misses together: "Neither, why are cars such dull, boring colours nowadays - let's keep the old one going a bit longer..."

  37. GNU Enjoyer
    Trollface

    If you want to keep kids off pornography sites

    The most effective method might be to teach them the consequences of proprietary JavaScript.

    As a result, some won't access such websites, as they don't work without proprietary JavaScript.

  38. Rogerborg 2.0
    Big Brother

    Reporting fail. Smut-sites are required (well, "required") to demand to know who you are now. July is the date when all anonymous access ends for everyone everywhere all at once. Why? Because anyone COULD post something that MiniVerify decides is verboten, to any site, including here. Not just videos and images, but naughty words. Remember "lawful but harmful"? You wouldn't want your children or wife or servants to be reading unapproved thoughts, would you?

    This isn't a bug, it's a feature. They're coming for the InstaBooks and TwiXXer. Digital papers, please.

  39. hammarbtyp

    what is porn

    Will art galleries be exempt? If so, I expect a lot of explicit sites to redefine themselves as art spaces

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Save the children!

    The same old bullshit. It should be up to the parents, not the government. Unless the parents are lazy or blame "I'm too busy", like my sister's ex did where their kids were young. He was a cop, moaned about GTA and said it should be banned and that when they were around mine, they weren't even allowed to watch me play it. I suggested "Maybe the parents need to monitor what their kids are playing instead of banning it" and he went all moody "Do you know how busy parents are? We can't monitor our kids all the time". What? So because of that everyone else has to suffer from your fucking ban!

    Anyway, magazines may rise again. Back in the 80s we used to play by the canal at lunch in school and found a homeless persons tent with a big stack of porn mags. I went back a few days later on my own to get some free samples and they were all gone. Turns out the other two I had been with, like the cunts they were, had revisited and threw all his stash in the canal "For a laugh".

    I eventually picked the local newsagent who I knew never bothered to check and would wait till the shop was clear, quickly grab a "jazz mag", pay and enjoy (got Playboy once to see what all the fuss was about. It was boring")

    People will find ways round it and this will just be a nightmare to manage.

    On another serious not, I feel for Molly Russell's father, but forcing your online safety bill to everyone else isn't the way. Having conversations with your kid, blocking access, trying to explain to them the shit that is on the internet that should be ignored would help, not banning everything. If he's fighting to also make it the responibility of the social media companies, then that is fine. Yes it should be, but that won't happen while they have billions to lobby governments to not force them to monitor their systems. After all Facebook has now dropped their moderators to appease Trump. When the likes of Facebook allow fake ads with Martin Lewis promoting shit despite him having sued them over this, when Instagram allow fake deep fake adverts to steal peoples cash, when YouTube continue to allow all their fake adverts and play Adsense even though they own Adsense, this is the real issue.

  41. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    "pornography and other harmful content"

    There's an immediate value imposition in that "other" there.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Didn’t some states in the US try this e.g. Florida and the sites just pulled out instead of complying? The same is going to happen here and VPN use will go up.

    1. Excused Boots Silver badge

      "Didn’t some states in the US try this e.g. Florida and the sites just pulled out instead of complying? The same is going to happen here and VPN use will go up.”

      Yes, I believe there are a dozen or so States that this has happened to, which suggests that the ‘porn merchants’ know full well that there is a demand for what they produce and customers will make efforts to get it. So from their perspective literally obey the Laws, pull out (no pun intended) from said State and know that people will still find a way access your wares (again, no pun intended!)

      Bonus points for hinting that ‘sorry about the inconvenience, but it has been forced on us by Laws enacted by your local representatives. Maybe consider that, next election time?'

  43. ChipsforBreakfast

    The internet is not your babysitter.

    Parenting is a job for parents, not for website owners, social media companies or the government. We seem to have forgotten that.

    We can't even stop under 18's from getting their hands on booze & vapes and those are in-person transactions, how hard does anyone think it'll be for them to work around 'age verification' online? The internet has always contained content that some find offensive and it always will. Standards and tolerance vary wildly across the globe (about the only thing I can think of that's near-universally despised worldwide is CSAM) and the internet is a global network, therefore any attempt to apply one nation's standards to it is doomed to abject failure from the start.

    I can't remember where I heard it now but it's very true - the internet treats censorship like breakage, it routes around it. Even if by some miracle we do manage to keep kids off of porn sites, the porn will just start being downloaded from torrent sites or stolen from adult's local caches/insecure accounts and traded by direct message, by whatsapp or telegram groups, airdropped between phones behind the bike sheds or even on good, old fashioned, USB sticks - they WILL find a way.

    Don't want your kids watching porn - parent them properly. Use filters (there are plenty of them), don't give them data access on phones/tablets, don't let them use social media. Teach them how to use the technology safely, appropriately and in a way that fits with your values - that's you JOB as a parent, you have no right to expect society to do it for you.

    1. Excused Boots Silver badge

      Re: The internet is not your babysitter.

      I have upvoted your post, because it is generally sensible, but especially for the phrase 'parent them properly’.

      I will take a alight exception to 'Don't want your kids watching porn’, which is a fair enough statement, every parent wants to protect their children - except they WILL, absolutely WILL watch porn. Unless you try to cut them off completely from their peers. 'don't let them use social media’, is fine, but impractical - would you rather they be open with you, or go behind your back and do it anyway?

      'Teach them how to use the technology safely, appropriately and in a way that fits with your values’. The first part of this phrase is absolutely correct, but, what if their values are different to yours?

      I have two daughters, when they both became old enough to ‘expect’ internet connected devices, I put in a sort of parental control mechanism - but, as I do this stuff for a living, I am fully aware of how useless they all are. So what I said to them both is this; “this device gives you access to all the collective knowledge of the human race, which is wonderful. But you will, stumble across some things that worry you, that you aren’t happy with, are confusing. Then you come to me or your mother and we will explain it to you. Importantly, you are not in any sort of trouble, it’s all good, good for you for coming to us with any issues.

      I think this approach worked when my eldest daughter (I think she was about 15 at the time) told me how she had been sent some ‘dick-pics’ on some site she was on. “Ok", I asked her, "what did you do”.

      She said that she replied with “Oh I’m not sure what that is, but if it what I think it is, then my cat has a bigger one!”

      Ah, my job is done!

      1. ChipsforBreakfast

        Re: The internet is not your babysitter.

        And an upvote for you too - I think we're largely on the same page. My comments were aimed far more at the 'parents' who think they can just leave kids to roam the internet and 'someone else' will make sure they don't see or do things they shouldn't - the kind of behaviour that precipitates flawed legislation like this.

        Our kids had social media but not until my wife and I were happy they were mature enough mentally and emotionally use it safely and to deal with the potential harms & risks it brings. Today, I hear stories of kids not even in their teens with smartphones, social media accounts and god knows what else - that's the target of my comment 'don't let them use social media'

        "'Teach them how to use the technology safely, appropriately and in a way that fits with your values’. The first part of this phrase is absolutely correct, but, what if their values are different to yours?" To be honest, 'my house, my rules'. When they moved out/bought & paid for their own devices then they could do as they please but when it's my house & my money they'll stick to my rules. Oldschool, yes, but I'm old... it worked for us.

        I've a similar tale from my daughter who was confronted by some willie-waving idiot on social media when she was about 18. She told my wife about it later who naturally asked her what she did about it. Her reply "Told him that if that's all he's offering I'll just go to the greengrocer". My wife just about choked on her tea!

  44. This post has been deleted by its author

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    At least everyone can keep watching...

    ..... knife crime, shooting and gory murders on mainstream TV.

  46. Jim Whitaker
    FAIL

    Of course this will work. What could possibly go wrong.

  47. t0m5k1

    Kids Gaming

    Wonder how this will affect Steam!

    There are many sexual games on there and even RPGs that have nudity/porn elements.

    Kids are not gonna be able to play games they've probably brought.

  48. Dr Dan Holdsworth
    Black Helicopters

    Always be sure that the cure is not worse than the disease

    If you actually went looking for Internet users who are most likely to do something extremely stupid online then young (and not so young) teenage boys must come right at the top of the list. They're not worldly wise, they're massively hormone-driven to be extremely interested in sex and everything to do with it and there's this huge reward in the form of porn sites waiting for them, if only they can get at it somehow.

    How do you get past a government censor? VPNs.

    How do you get onto a VPN if you've got no money? You go looking for a free VPN, of course, and pretty soon you fetch up using a Chinese free VPN that hurls adverts at you, logs your every move and tries its absolute best to infect your device with malware into the bargain.

    What is the outcome of this law?

    1) No teenager has been prevented from getting at porn.

    2) All teenagers have been taught to break inconvenient laws.

    3) All teenagers have been taught that the Government is really stupid.

    4) Malware spreaders, blackmailers and paedophiles of all stripes have a field day exploiting these naive new porn addicts.

    Well done, Government!

  49. Jake Maverick

    if you can't say it anonymously you don't have freedom of speech.... :-( I'm 47 and feel like i'm about to be banned online as well now as I don't have the means to verify my age.... if you're not on the government's facial recognition system (passport, driving license or armed forces card) you can't do anything.... :-(

  50. jospanner Silver badge

    I hate this fucking country.

  51. Tom66

    If face ID is permitted, then it will be trivially easy to bypass on a PC since the Windows camera API allows you to create a fake webcam. That is one way that Teams scam calls with deepfakes happen.

  52. ukgnome
    Joke

    This won't work

    Only because I have just bought 5000 1GB flash drives from Temu and transferred some high quality smut on them.

    Next plan is to discard them in bushes

    I will single handedly bring back bush porn

    1. Nick Ryan

      Re: This won't work

      Please don't forget the telephone boxes. These are far superior as they, initially at least, waterproof. As a result much better places to store material that is sensitive to damp

  53. andy gibson

    Back to the Kays catalogue for me

    As title

  54. Jo 5

    Over my cold dead boner!

  55. Herring` Silver badge

    "Websites"

    So an FTP server is fine?

    Or a specific app. Or email. Or ....

  56. scrubber
    Big Brother

    Back to the High Seas

    Whatever happened to parents?

  57. Eponymous Bastard

    Mary Whitehouse reborn

    . . . for the 21st century. Yawn.

  58. Sub 20 Pilot

    Same victorian dad / US shit.

    Blah blah blah...pornography is bad, needs to be stopped, same shit different twats in charge.

    Does anyone else think that this victorian / US atttude towards sex is fucking bonkers while there are billions of sites and tv programmes showng all manner of graphic volence, murders, death etc in fictonal tv or internet shows ?

    Sex is natural, nudity is natural despite the relgious morons teling us it is perverse. Killing people, even fictional, is not fucking normal but this is considered OK for children to see ?

    The aliens or the world killing asteroid can't come soon enough if the majority of people disagree.

  59. IceC0ld

    nice try, but they won't be able to keep it up :o)

  60. Ruisert

    Welcome to Texas, y'all! Except y'all do still have some form of affordable healthcare for all.

  61. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    don't we just use tor browser

    tor used to be part of brave browser on windows. but tor on android works fine. and audio works so you can hear the action too. and you can accept cookies with gay abandon knowing the session will die when you finish up

    you do end up on the German PT but it's pretty easy to translate pizzle or whatever

    but xvids is a better search. PT does not show quite the same selections .

    finding true amateur cuck cleanup invariably goes to commercial models for example but the search is just like duckdick go.

    tor has fewer eminations and unlike VPN you are not directly tracked. plus free. obviously tor exits can be compromised and there are vulns but better than a VPN service that keeps your logs and shares with law enforcement or the bishop

    the only issue is that sometimes vids halt mid session which can be frustrating so you have to divert your energies to fixing or finding a better selection .

    a trivial bypass to a ridiculous law

  62. CorwinX

    So send personal identification to ISP...

    Rather than just what's needed for the bill.

    Hope ISP doesn't get hacked.

    What could go wrong

  63. Persona Silver badge

    Gov.uk app

    I'm cynical enough to suspect that at least part of reason for this is to make the upcoming Government digital driving license and identity initiative more popular.

  64. Nick Ryan

    RIghto... I just need some pictures of Michelle Donelan or Stephen Parkinson to prove my age on any website. Not a problem, I can find pictures of these and I'll tick every single data gathering box allowing my likeness, which coincidentally will look identical to Donelan or Parkinson, to be stored in whatever databases these sites want.

  65. emacca

    Crazy

    This is simply about controlling speech and the net. Hopefully this won’t work. Already this government has already shown that ‘think of the children’ is the last thing they care about.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like