Italy to implement age verification for porn sites later this month

In a week and a half, the Italian government will launch mandatory age verification for adult websites to prevent minors from accessing sites with pornographic content.

Last Friday, the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM), Italy’s communications regulator, announced that these websites must implement age verification systems if they wish to continue to operate in Italy.

AGCOM has published a list of 45 websites that will be required to comply with the new rule. The list contains lots of popular adult sites, including OnlyFans, Pornhub, Redtube, xHamster, xVideos, and YouPorn.

The new rule will require users to get verified through “certified independent third parties,” meaning that another company, bank, or mobile operator that already has the relevant information to ascertain a user’s age must validate this. Once the third party confirms a user’s age, it will issue a code that grants them access to the adult website.

To protect a user’s privacy, the age verification process uses a “double anonymity” system. This means that the age verification provider doesn’t know what website a user intends to visit. At the same time, the evidence provided to the website or platform doesn’t contain user identification data.

The new age verification rule will go into effect on November 12th. Adult websites that don’t comply risk hefty penalties of up to €250,000.

Italy is the latest country to implement age verification rules for websites and platforms that offer pornographic content.

France did so in June, and the United Kingdom enforced the Online Safety Act in July. The legislation is designed to prevent minors from accessing websites that contain pornographic material and other harmful content, such as information regarding self-mutilation, eating disorders, or suicide.

Non-compliance may result in penalties of up to £18 million, or 10% of a company’s annual global turnover, whichever is greater.

From the start, critics have been skeptical about online age verification plans, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). According to the international non-profit digital rights group, online age verification is no more than a “misguided approach” to protect children online.

“It is a threat to the privacy of users, restricts free expression by arbitrating speech online, exposes users to algorithmic discrimination through face checks, and leaves millions of people without a personal device or form of ID excluded from accessing the internet,” the EFF said at the time of the launch of the Online Safety Act.

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