- Arizona is ready to enforce mandatory age verification to access only adult sites starting on Friday, September 26
- Aylo, the owner of several large adult content pages, has already announced his decision to block all its content for all users based in Arizona
- While the law comes in an attempt to protect children online, some experts warn of privacy implications
People in Arizona will soon have to be ready to prove that they are over 18 years of age who only have access to adult sites.
As of Friday 26. September, Arizona HB 2112 requires any location that shows at least 30% of only adult content to scan a government ID or another “commercially reasonable method”, such as credit card control, to verify users’ age.
Fines for non -compliance can be as high as $ 10,000 per day. Day when parents and guardians are able to ask for up to $ 250,000 if their child actually accesses the forbidden content.
Arizona is only the latest of US states adopting a form of age verification legislation, which further fuel for a debate about the balance between children’s security, privacy and security online.
The owner of several larger adult-only sites, Aylo, considered the law “ineffective, random and dangerous,” who confirms his decision to block all its content for all users based in Arizona.
This step along with concerns about privacy and security is likely to push people in Arizona to turn to the best VPN services to keep access to adults who are only without need to abandon their sensitive data.
How Arizona’s Age Verification Act threatens your privacy
“Any rules that require hundreds of thousands of adult places to collect significant amounts of very sensitive personal information, putting user security at risk,” Aylo told Fox 10 Phoenix and comments on his decision to leave the Arizona market.
These are recurring concerns when it comes to similar age verification laws, both in and out of the United States. For example, experts in the UK have also raised similar concerns that assess Britain’s mandatory age age controls a “exchange of confidentiality.”
Mandatory age control means that both minors and adults have to share sensitive pieces of information with tech providers-what is either their biometric details, bank accounts or government issued ID.
This mass data collection could not only lead to privacy violations – especially considering that both the US and Arizona still lack extensive data protection rules – but also makes citizens vulnerable to security risks if this data is hacked or leaked.
It is true that online platforms according to Arizona are prohibited from storing user data collected for age verification purposes. Still, it is still unclear how this provision should be enforced in practice.
Easy to bypass
In his official statement, Aylo also highlights something that many experts have long claimed – age verification is not only invasive but mostly ineffective.
This is mainly due to the fact that bypassing tools such as a virtual private network (VPN) could enable users to look like they are browsing from a completely different place and bypassing any of these geo-limitations.
Therefore, Michigan is also targeting VPN use with his new proposed adult content. A result that would further bring American rights to privacy and security.
In comments on this point, Nordvpn’s privacy lawyer, Laura Tyryryte, told Techradar: “Limiting access to these technologies not only jeopardizing individual freedoms, but also puts a worrying precedent for increased government control over the open internet.”
While Arizona’s law does not plan to go this far yet, everything can change if it has been proven that VPN services would place mandatory age verification requirements completely ineffective.
