Adult Sites’ New Age Verification Checks

Online pornography age checks are going to be mandatory in UK from 15th July but there are number of ecurity implications around this and the possibility of cybercriminals creating fraudulent age verification processes in order to access the personal information of unsuspecting Brits.   

Twitter Reaction:  

The UK’s age verification system for online pornography will become mandatory on 15 July. Criticisms are that it will be ineffective, counterproductive and that it will create a huge porn viewer database that will attract hackers… https://t.co/3Zu07OutgD

— IFEX (@IFEX) April 18, 2019

https://twitter.com/UkPlusMore_/status/1118550422493569024

So when the UK Department for Culture Media and Sport announces country-wide age verification from July, there are even more problems than privacy issues regarding having a database listing people who have been "age-verified" to access adult content… https://t.co/zzuEeQLhAU

— Okeefekat at dair-community.social (@okeefekat) April 17, 2019

Expert Comments:

John Fokker, Head of Cyber Investigations at McAfee:

“It is important that the implementation of these robust age verification checks are done diligently, as it is likely that cybercriminals will target users by creating fraudulent age verification processes to cash-in on unsuspecting Brits. 

“As it stands, some websites ask for age verification through the means of asking users to input sensitive personal information, including credit card details. And this is the perfect ploy for cybercriminals to take advantage, encouraging users to unknowingly hand over their card details and give direct access to all kinds of personal information, including card numbers, home addresses and online passwords. 

“A censored internet will force users to circumvent the enforced controls. On the hunt for the content they want, it is likely they will search in even more dangerous places online. It’s paramount that people take responsibility to check the authenticity of websites before sharing any personal information. Once submitted, people must keep a close eye on their bank account history because all-too-often criminals get away with their fraudulent activity for quite some time before anyone realises.”