Favorite Wisconsin’s S.B. 130 / A.B. 105 is a spectacularly bad idea. It’s an age-verification bill that effectively bans VPN access to certain websites for Wisconsinites and censors lawful speech. We wrote about it last November in our blog “Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They’re Doing,” but since then, the…
All posts tagged Age Verification and Age Gating: Resource Hub
Discord Voluntarily Pushes Mandatory Age Verification Despite Recent Data Breach
Favorite Discord has begun rolling out mandatory age verification and the internet is, understandably, freaking out. At EFF, we’ve been raising the alarm about age verification mandates for years. In December, we launched our Age Verification Resource Hub to push back against laws and platform policies that require users to hand over sensitive personal information…
Congress Wants To Hand Your Parenting to Big Tech
Favorite Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing today on “examining the effect of technology on America’s youth.” Witnesses warned about “addictive” online content, mental health, and kids…
So, You’ve Hit an Age Gate. What Now?
Favorite This blog also appears in our Age Verification Resource Hub: our one-stop shop for users seeking to understand what age-gating laws actually do, what’s at stake, how to protect yourself, and why EFF opposes all forms of age verification mandates. Head to EFF.org/Age to explore our resources and join us in the fight for a…
EFFecting Change: The Human Cost of Online Age Verification
Favorite Age verification mandates are spreading fast, and they’re ushering in a new age of online surveillance, censorship, and exclusion for everyone—not just young people. Age-gating laws generally require websites and apps to collect sensitive data from every user, often through invasive tools like ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “estimation” methods, before granting…
Congress's Crusade to Age Gate the Internet: 2025 in Review
Favorite In the name of ‘protecting kids online,’ Congress pushed forward legislation this year that could have severely undermined our privacy and stifled free speech. These bills would have mandated invasive age-verification checks for everyone online—adults and kids alike—handing unprecedented control to tech companies and government authorities. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle introduced…
Lawmakers Must Listen to Young People Before Regulating Their Internet Access: 2025 in Review
Favorite State and federal lawmakers have introduced multiple proposals in 2025 to curtail or outright block children and teenagers from accessing legal content on the internet. These lawmakers argue that internet and social media platforms have an obligation to censor or suppress speech that they consider “harmful” to young people. Unfortunately, in many of these…
Age Verification Threats Across the Globe: 2025 in Review
Favorite Age verification mandates won’t magically keep young people safer online, but that has not stopped governments around the world spending this year implementing or attempting to introduce legislation requiring all online users to verify their ages before accessing the digital space. The UK’s misguided approach to protecting young people online took many headlines due…
Why Isn’t Online Age Verification Just Like Showing Your ID In Person?
Favorite This blog also appears in our Age Verification Resource Hub: our one-stop shop for users seeking to understand what age-gating laws actually do, what’s at stake, how to protect yourself, and why EFF opposes all forms of age verification mandates. Head to EFF.org/Age to explore our resources and join us in the fight for a…
Age Verification Is Coming For the Internet. We Built You a Resource Hub to Fight Back.
Favorite 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…