Captured source text (L5)
**What does highly effective age assurance mean?**
Our approach to highly effective age assurance and how we expect it to be implemented in practice applies consistently across three pieces of industry guidance, published today\[5\]. Our final position, in summary:
- confirms that any age-checking methods deployed by services must be technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair in order to be considered highly effective;
- sets out a non-exhaustive list of methods that we consider are capable of being highly effective. They include: open banking, photo ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile network operator age checks, credit card checks, digital identity services and email-based age estimation;
- confirms that methods including self-declaration of age and online payments which don’t require a person to be 18 are not highly effective;
- stipulates that pornographic content must not be visible to users before, or during, the process of completing an age check. Nor should services host or permit content that directs or encourages users to attempt to circumvent an age assurance process; and
- sets expectations that sites and apps consider the interests of all users when implementing age assurance – affording strong protection to children, while taking care that privacy rights are respected and adults can still access legal pornography.
We consider this approach will secure the best outcomes for the protection of children online in the early years of the Act being in force. While we have decided not to introduce numerical thresholds for highly effective age assurance at this stage (e.g. 99% accuracy), we acknowledge that numerical thresholds may complement our four criteria in the future, pending further developments in testing methodologies, industry standards, and independent research.
Full captured verbatim text
Our approach to highly effective age assurance and how we expect it to be implemented in practice applies consistently across three pieces of industry guidance, published today\[5\]. Our final position, in summary: - confirms that any age-checking methods deployed by services must be technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair in order to be considered highly effective; - sets out a non-exhaustive list of methods that we consider are capable of being highly effective. They include: open banking, photo ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile network operator age checks, credit card checks, digital identity services and email-based age estimation; - confirms that methods including self-declaration of age and online payments which don’t require a person to be 18 are not highly effective; - stipulates that pornographic content must not be visible to users before, or during, the process of completing an age check. Nor should services host or permit content that directs or encourages users to attempt to circumvent an age assurance process; and - sets expectations that sites and apps consider the interests of all users when implementing age assurance – affording strong protection to children, while taking care that privacy rights are respected and adults can still access legal pornography. We consider this approach will secure the best outcomes for the protection of children online in the early years of the Act being in force. While we have decided not to introduce numerical thresholds for highly effective age assurance at this stage (e.g. 99% accuracy), we acknowledge that numerical thresholds may complement our four criteria in the future, pending further developments in testing methodologies, industry standards, and independent research.