Opponents of online age assurance raise five main risks:
- Adults being forced to identify themselves to browse lawful content;
- children being excluded from legitimate services;
- sensitive data being retained and then breached;
- age checks expanding beyond their original purpose; and
- weak or biased systems making unfair decisions.
These are only risks if age assurance is badly designed and poorly regulated. They are also precisely why the AVPA supports privacy-preserving, independently certified, data minimising systems with a choice of methods, no unnecessary retention of personal data, accessible appeal routes and stronger regulatory oversight. See below for responses to each of these objections and explanations of what good design, certification and regulation do about it. Where a poor deployment falls short, we warn about the risk that creates.