Age Verification Is Coming For the Internet. We Built You a Resource Hub to Fight Back. (EFF)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/age-verification-coming-internet-we-built-you-resource-hub-fight-back
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Age verification laws are proliferating fast across the United States and around the world, creating a dangerous and confusing tangle of rules about what we’re all allowed to see and do online. Though these mandates claim to protect children, in practice they create harmful censorship and surveillance regimes that put everyone—adults and young people alike—at risk.

The term “age verification” is colloquially used to describe a wide range of age assurance technologies, from age verification systems that force you to upload government ID, to age estimation tools that scan your face, to systems that infer your age by making you share personal data. While different laws call for different methods, one thing remains constant: every method out there collects your sensitive, personal information and creates barriers to accessing the internet. We refer to all of these requirements as age verification, age assurance, or age-gating.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this onslaught of laws and the invasive technologies behind them, you’re not alone. It’s a lot. But understanding how these mandates work and who they harm is critical to keeping yourself and your loved ones safe online. Age verification is lurking around every corner these days, so we must fight back to protect the internet that we know and love.

That’s why today, we’re launching EFF’s Age Verification Resource Hub (EFF.org/Age): a one-stop shop to understand what these laws actually do, what’s at stake, why EFF opposes all forms of age verification, how to protect yourself, and how to join the fight for a free, open, private, and yes—safe—internet.

Why Age Verification Mandates Are a Problem

In the U.S., more than half of all states have now passed laws imposing age-verification requirements on online platforms. Congress is considering even more at the federal level, with a recent House hearing weighing nineteen distinct proposals relating to young people’s online safety—some sweeping, some contradictory, and each one more drastic and draconian than the last.

We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the silver bullet that lawmakers want you to think it is.

The rest of the world is moving in the same direction. We saw the UK’s Online Safety Act go into effect this summer, Australia’s new law barring access to social media for anyone under 16 goes live today, and a slew of other countries are currently considering similar restrictions.

We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the silver bullet that lawmakers want you to think it is. In fact, age-gating mandates will do more harm than good—especially for the young people they claim to protect. They undermine the fundamental speech rights of adults and young people alike; create new barriers to accessing vibrant, lawful, even life-saving content; and needlessly jeopardize all internet users’ privacy, anonymity, and security.

If legislators want to meaningfully improve online safety, they should pass a strong, comprehensive federal privacy law instead of building new systems of surveillance, censorship, and exclusion.

What’s Inside the Resource Hub

Our new hub is built to answer the questions we hear from users every day, such as:

• How do age verification laws actually work?
• What’s the difference between age verification, age estimation, age assurance, and all the other confusing technical terms I’m hearing?
• What’s at stake for me, and who else is harmed by these systems?
• How can I keep myself, my family, and my community safe as these laws continue to roll out?
• What can I do to fight back?
• And if not age verification, what else can we do to protect the online safety of our young people?

Head over to EFF.org/Age to explore our explainers, user-friendly guides, technical breakdowns, and advocacy tools—all indexed in the sidebar for easy browsing. And today is just the start, so keep checking back over the next several weeks as we continue to build out the site with new resources and answers to more of your questions on all things age verification.

Join Us: Reddit AMA & EFFecting Change Livestream Events

To celebrate the launch of EFF.org/Age, and to hear directly from you how we can be most helpful in this fight, we’re hosting two exciting events:

1. Reddit AMA on r/privacy

Next week, our team of EFF activists, technologists, and lawyers will be hanging out over on Reddit’s r/privacy subreddit to directly answer your questions on all things age verification. We’re looking forward to connecting with you and hearing how we can help you navigate these changing tides, so come on over to r/privacy on Monday (12/15), Tuesday (12/16), and Wednesday (12/17), and ask us anything!

2. EFFecting Change Livestream Panel: “The Human Cost of Online Age Verification”

Then, on January 15th at 12pm PT, we’re hosting a livestream panel featuring Cynthia Conti-Cook, Director of Research and Policy at the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience; Hana Memon, Software Developer at Gen Z for Change; EFF Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock; and EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji. We’ll break down how these laws work, who they exclude, and how these mandates threaten privacy and free expression for people of all ages. Join us by RSVPing at https://livestream.eff.org/.

A Resource to Empower Users

Age-verification mandates are reshaping the internet in ways that are invasive, dangerous, and deeply unnecessary. But users are not powerless! We can challenge these laws, protect our digital rights, and build a safer digital world for all internet users, no matter their ages. Our new resource hub is here to help—so explore, share, and join us in the fight for a better internet.
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RELATED PRESS RELEASE:
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-launches-age-verification-hub-resource-against-misguided-laws
EFF Launches Age Verification Hub as Resource Against Misguided Laws

EFF Also Will Host a Reddit AMA and a Livestreamed Panel Discussion

SAN FRANCISCO—With ill-advised and dangerous age verification laws proliferating across the United States and around the world, creating surveillance and censorship regimes that will be used to harm both youth and adults, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new resource hub that will sort through the mess and help people fight back.

To mark the hub's launch, EFF will host a Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) next week and a free livestreamed panel discussion on January 15 highlighting the dangers of these misguided laws.

“These restrictive mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet,” said EFF Activist Molly Buckley. “While they are wrapped in the legitimate concern about children's safety, they operate as tools of censorship, used to block people young and old from viewing or sharing information that the government deems ‘harmful’ or ‘offensive.’ They also create surveillance systems that critically undermine online privacy, and chill access to vital online communities and resources. Our new resource hub is a one-stop shop for information that people can use to fight back and redirect lawmakers to things that will actually help young people, like a comprehensive privacy law.”

Half of U.S. states have enacted some sort of online age verification law. At the federal level, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee last week held a hearing on “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.” While many of the 19 bills on that hearing’s agenda involve age verification, none would truly protect children and teens. Instead, they threaten to make it harder to access content that can be crucial, even lifesaving, for some kids.

It’s not just in the U.S. Effective this week, a new Australian law requires social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account.

We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the panacea that regulators and corporations claim it to be; in fact, it could undermine the safety of many.

Age verification laws generally require online services to check, estimate, or verify all users’ ages—often through invasive tools like government ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “age estimation” methods—before granting them access to certain online content or services. These methods are often inaccurate and always privacy-invasive, demanding that users hand over sensitive and immutable personal information that links their offline identity to their online activity. Once that valuable data is collected, it can easily be leaked, hacked, or misused.

To truly protect everyone online, including children, EFF advocates for a comprehensive data privacy law.

EFF will host a Reddit AMA on r/privacy from Monday, Dec. 15 at 12 p.m. PT through Wednesday, Dec. 17 at 5 p.m. PT, with EFF attorneys, technologists, and activists answering questions about age verification on all three days.

EFF will host a free livestream panel discussion about age verification at 12 p.m. PDT on Thursday, Jan. 15. Panelists will include Cynthia Conti-Cook, Director of Research and Policy at the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience; a representative of Gen Z for Change; EFF Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock; and EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji. RSVP at https://www.eff.org/livestream-age.

For the age verification resource hub: https://www.eff.org/age

For the Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/

For the Jan. 15 livestream: https://www.eff.org/livestream-age
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As one might expect, a very long discussion on Hacker News,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223389

And here's the TLDR:

Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance

It is very difficult to do age verification and maintain "zero knowledge"
Difficulty means cost
Cost means it won't get done well, only shoddily. Capitalism, Comrade!

And these people REALLY WANT all your identity and data, if they don't already have it.



JD learned from his Dad the value of data.



(1) https://www.eff.org/copyright