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Age checks should not be introduced on social media sites until privacy and security concerns are addressed, hundreds of academics told governments on Monday.
The open letter from 371 security and privacy academics from 29 countries comes as several European countries, including the UK, Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Finland, and Germany are consider imposing restrictions on children’s access to social media.
Age verification, which predicts a user’s age based on a live selfie or a piece of government ID, is already being used by some social media companies and is mandatory in European countries such as Italy and France.
But the letter argues that the method is not safe and risks exposing users to malware or scams on illicit sites that do not implement verification, or revealing more personal information to service providers.
It says that these services should not be deployed “until the scientific consensus settles on the benefits and harms that age-assurance technologies can bring.”
Until then, they argue that “it is dangerous and socially unacceptable” to put it in place without understanding what it means for security, privacy, and equality.
An effective age verification system would have cryptographic protection built into every query that would protect data as it is being sent and received, the letter says.
“Such infrastructure is not only hard to build and maintain on a global scale, but would add friction in services, meaning many providers would refuse to install age checks.”
Signatories include Ronald Rivest, winner of the prestigious Turing Award in computing, and Bart Preneel, president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research.