Australia to introduce age checks for internet searches

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australians will soon be subject to mandatory age checks when they log into online search engines such as Google and Microsoft. The new regulations were quietly passed late last month in a bid to prevent children accessing harmful content.

Transcript

00:00I think we will see, according to these rules, we will see from December 27 that search engines

00:08will be required to use some form of age assurance technology on users who sign in.

00:14And the alternative there is facing a fine of almost $50 million from the eSafety Commissioner

00:20per breach.

00:22So this will cover Google, as you say, which has more than 90% share of the Australian

00:27market, also Microsoft, and the practical effect for logged in users.

00:32So if you log in and you're demonstrated to be under 18, your search results will then

00:38be filtered.

00:39It'll filter out things like high impact violence, pornography, eating disorder content.

00:45There's a whole list of content that will be caught theoretically under these filters.

00:50You can, of course, still search without signing in, without logging in.

00:54And then you'll experience a kind of default safety setting where images of pornography

00:59or high impact violence will be blurred.

01:01But you may not experience that, you know, like filtering out of entire links and, you

01:07know, that total kind of control that or high level of control that under 18 users will experience.

01:13We don't know yet how search engines will go about checking our ages, much like with the

01:18social media ban.

01:20It'll be down to the companies themselves.

01:22There's a bit of a menu of options available to them under these rules.

01:26Things like photo ID, face scanning, credit card checks.

01:30And then there's a really frictionless option that they may go for, which is just guessing

01:34your age using, it's called age inference, using AI based on the data they already have

01:40about you.

01:41And if you think about, you know, how much data a browser has on its users, you know, it

01:45can be a lot of data, so they might just be able to work it out in the background.

01:50Whether or not it'll keep young people safer is a different question.

01:53So Professor Lisa Given from RMIT University says that there may be a few ways around these

02:01controls.

02:02It serves as a bit of a gatekeeping function.

02:04But at the end of the day, where there's a will, there's a way.

02:07People can definitely still access this content by not logging into an account.

02:12They could also use a VPN to get around it by pretending to not be in Australia, for example.

02:17And of course, in many people's homes, there's often like a family account where people might

02:22have a shared laptop logged in all the time.

02:25Parents are going to have to be very careful to ensure that they are logged out of an adult

02:30account in order for these kind of controls to be appropriately in place.

02:35You know, on the other hand, you know, what the eSafety Commissioner is saying is really

02:39these new rules aren't intended to be the be all and end all.

02:43They are part of a larger layered framework that is being brought in where age checks may

02:50exist at not just the search engine level, but at various different points.

02:55And it's, you know, a bigger picture that will keep young people safe from a lot of these harms online.

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