Surfing the murkier regions of the Internet is hardly anonymous these days, but Britain’s government appears poised to require Britons to identify themselves before entering porn sites. The U.K. government is trying to find a way to verify user’s ages to prevent underage viewers from accessing adult content.
The process used by many video game publishers (in which the user inputs his age and is expected to be honest) isn’t going to cut it for the expected new rules in Britain. Some of the age verification methods being considered would involve contacting a user’s bank or the postal service.
U.K. users may be able to hang onto some of their privacy if the government goes with a verification system that features some kind of go-between responsible for stripping identifying information from the age verification process. The process may not make one’s age verification completely anonymous, but could limit the number of organizations that store data linking a user to a particular website.
“Nobody in the U.K. wants a centralized identity database,” safety expert Dr. Rachel O’Connell told The Guardian. “The way around that is that Royal Mail knows who you are, your mobile operator knows who you are.”
Porn sites based in the U.K. already require age checks, which is believed to have made competing with foreign porn sites difficult.
[“source-hothardware.com”]
