The Central Government has decided to take action following the more than worrying data on minors who freely access pornographic pages on the internet. For this reason, the Council of Ministers has approved a report that establishes a road map to curb children’s access (even ten years old) to content that harms their development, that encourages violence against women and that it creates addiction.
This strategy is fundamentally based on enforcing Spanish and European laws that oblige the platforms hosting these pages to verify that the user is of legal age. These are rules that were approved between 2018 and 2022. In addition, in February, another one of an even clearer European nature is planned that establishes the obligation of companies to have an effective system for checking age of the user.
An effective system? Yes, because nowadays what the platforms impose is self-verification of identity without any control: “Are you of legal age? Yes or no”. As the data makes clear, this system is totally ineffective, as boys pass themselves off as adults without a problem. Half of minors between the ages of 12 and 15 have accessed porn websites, and 25% have accessed them before they turned 12. 70% of minors between 13 and 17 access them regularly and 30% recognize that these pages are their source of knowledge about sexual life.
The industry claims that there is nothing they can do if the user is lying, but now the Spanish Data Protection Association (AEPD) has shown that it is possible to do something. Following the platforms’ excuses, the AEPD put a thread on the needle and in a few months has designed an age verification system that complies with all data protection regulations to guarantee anonymity and that has been ” totally effective”, as explained by the head of the AEPD, María España, at the presentation of the system in December. This system is not only used to prevent access to porn websites, but also to prevent small children from entering social networks, such as TikTok, which has a minimum age set at 14.
This has been demonstrated by the Spanish Data Protection Agency, with the National Coin and Stamp Factory (FNMT), who are already working on an application that corroborates this and which they will make available to the industry for free from the summer.
Since then, “there will be no more excuses. Because it can be done and we have verified it”, pointed out at the time the director of the AEPD, Mar España, and the president of the FNMT, Isabel Valldecabres, who remember that, if these verification systems are not put in place, the companies can be fined up to 3% of annual turnover, and if they don’t correct the system, they could be ordered to close.
What does this verification system consist of? The application, which is designed by the FNMT and has already been tested on both mobile phones and computers and video game consoles, consists in the fact that content providers install an age verification system that forces the ‘user who wants to enter social networks or dangerous content to download an application that, either through a QR, a key or another mechanism, gives him access to the page.
This type of certificate would work in a similar way to the electronic certificate that is commonly used for online procedures and would also be issued by the FNMT based on an official document, such as the DNI, passport or driver’s license. But with the particularity that it would be anonymous: it only certifies that the owner is over 14 or 18 years old and that it does not share with the content provider more user data than the name, surname and exact age. This prevents mass profiling or unnecessary data collection and processing.
According to the Spanish Government, it is a pioneering initiative in Europe, although other countries, such as the United Kingdom and France, are implementing similar systems.
The implementation of this verification system will go hand in hand with other measures that will be implemented by the different ministries. So, the Department of Children and Youth, for example, will bring together this term 50 experts in childhood, internet and pornography to design the necessary measures to protect minors and which could culminate in a comprehensive law for the protection of children on the internet. And, of course, awareness campaigns, especially for families and minors about the use of technology.
