CommLedgeAge Verification
The protection of minors when accessing the internet has been a focus of attention in the European Union for a long time. In the Digital Services Act, both standards for age verification and parental control as well as standardised interfaces for service providers to access and make use of verified age information are requested from the ESOs.
Age verification solutions must be compatible with national electronic passport or identity card systems, and as long as these systems are implemented following national standards and solutions it might only be possible to standardise certain (cyber) security, privacy and user/usage requirements for age verification processes.
In addition, it should be possible to standardise a set of options of how to store validated age verification (and potentially other information related to age information) in the end user devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs) based on existing solutions like wallet apps in smartphones or attached to user login information in tablet or PCs. These standards should also ensure that the age and rights information stored cannot be tampered with or modified by either the minor users or external third parties.
This requires the setup of a specific project that is handled by the ETSI Specialist Task Force (STF) 681. The STF will undertake the pre-standardisation analysis and provide recommendations for future standardisation work.
Age verification solutions must be compatible with national electronic passport or identity card systems, and as long as these systems are implemented following national standards and solutions it might only be possible to standardise certain (cyber) security, privacy and user/usage requirements for age verification processes.
In addition, it should be possible to standardise a set of options of how to store validated age verification (and potentially other information related to age information) in the end user devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs) based on existing solutions like wallet apps in smartphones or attached to user login information in tablet or PCs. These standards should also ensure that the age and rights information stored cannot be tampered with or modified by either the minor users or external third parties.
This requires the setup of a specific project that is handled by the ETSI Specialist Task Force (STF) 681. The STF will undertake the pre-standardisation analysis and provide recommendations for future standardisation work.
The ETSI Specialist Task Force on Age Verification Pre-Standardisation (STF 681)
Addressing potential standardisation points
The question of how to verify age information of minors and how to integrate parental control tools with age verification systems has been explored in depth by the EUConsent project. The solutions explored and proposed by EUConsent are, however, mainly related to agency-supported age verification.
The question of how to make verified age information available to service and information providers and usable by parents and minors, has not yet been addressed in detail.
The project explores predominantly the need for standards to make age information about minors available to service providers and useful to both minors and their parents.
The question of how to make verified age information available to service and information providers and usable by parents and minors, has not yet been addressed in detail.
The project explores predominantly the need for standards to make age information about minors available to service providers and useful to both minors and their parents.
- By assessing the landscape of existing standard documents related to age verification and usage of validated age information.
- By assessing the requirements of all stakeholders which have an interest to make us of age-verified information about minors in their business and everyday life.
- By assessing both age verification solutions proposed by EuConsent and solutions implemented in various member states to identify potential candidates for later standardisation.
- By proposing standards to be developed based on the analysis of requirements and existing pilot solutions. These proposed solutions should be the basis for the standardisation acts as proposed in the Digital Services Act.
Main results
The final results are 3 Technical Reports
TR 104 077-1
TR 104 077-1
TR 104 077-1
that are available from the ETSI web site.