Assessing Age Assurance Technologies: Effectiveness, Side-Effects, and Acceptance
This work addresses the problem of protecting minors online by assessing technologies for age assurance, but it is incremental as it provides an overview and evaluation without introducing new methods.
The paper evaluates various age assurance technologies (AAT) by analyzing their effectiveness, side-effects, and acceptance, concluding with recommendations on which types are better suited to protect minors online based on a hierarchy weighing effectiveness against side effects.
In this paper, we provide an overview and evaluation of different types of age assurance technologies (AAT). We describe and analyse 1) different approaches to age assurance online (age verification, age estimation, age inference, and parental control and consent), as well as 2) different age assurance architectures (online, offline device-based, offline credential-based), and assess their various combinations with regards to their respective a) effectiveness, b) side effects, and c) acceptance. We then discuss general limitations of AAT's effectiveness stemming from the possibility of circumvention and outline the most important side effects, in particular regarding privacy and anonymity of all users; bias, discrimination, and exclusion; as well as censorship and related concerns. We conclude our analyses by offering some recommendations on which types of AAT are better or less suited to protect minors online. Guiding our assessment is a weighing of effectiveness against side effects, resulting in a graduated hierarchy of acceptable AAT mechanisms.