Apple launches ‘age assurance’ technology
Apple says it will introduce a way for parents to share the age of a child with app developers without revealing sensitive information such as birthdays or government identification numbers.
The move comes as Australia – as well as state and federal lawmakers in the US – considers age-verification laws for social media and other apps.
Late last year, the Albanese government launched legislation targeting platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) as those that will have to enforce age limitations on users or face fines of up to $49.5 million.
Australia is the first country in the world to consider a national ban. But in the US, states such as Utah and South Carolina are debating laws that would require app store operators such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google to check the ages of users.
That has set up a conflict in the tech industry over who has responsibility for checking ages for users under 18 – app stores or each app?
Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, for instance, has long argued in favour of legislation requiring app stores to check ages when a child downloads an app.
On Thursday (US time), Apple said it did not want to be responsible for collecting sensitive data for those age verifications.
“While only a fraction of apps on the App Store may require age verification, all users would have to hand over their sensitive personally identifying information to us – regardless of whether they actually want to use one of these limited set of apps,” Apple wrote in a whitepaper on its website.
As an alternative, Apple said it would roll out what it called “age assurance”. With it, parents would be able to input a child’s age when setting up an account for them.
The parent could then choose to allow the child to share what Apple calls a “declared age range” – rather than an exact birthday or other identifying information – with third-party app developers. The parent will have the ability to turn off age-range sharing.
“This protects privacy by keeping parents in control of their kids’ sensitive personal information, while minimising the amount of information that is shared with third parties,” Apple said.
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Meta spokeswoman Stephanie Otway said the technology was “a positive first step” but still required the child to share age range data with the developer, which would make it more difficult for Meta to put to use.
“Parents tell us they want to have the final say over the apps their teens use, and that’s why we support legislation that requires app stores to verify a child’s age and get a parent’s approval before their child downloads an app,” Otway said.
Apple’s existing controls already require parental approval for children to download an app.
– with AAP
