• March 6, 2019

Britons those who want to watch porn have to prove their age

LONDON March 6: Britons who want to watch free porn online may have to prove their age using their passport in as little as eight weeks.

In a move intended to help prevent children accessing inappropriate material online, UK websites which comprise of more than one third pornographic material will have to age-check their users.

Even free-to-access sites will be locked down behind a non-pornographic landing page and many of the country’s most popular sites have signed up to the AgeID system, which requires users to verify their age via an official form of ID such as a driver’s license or passport.
The start date of the scheme, introduced in the 2017 Digital Economy Act, has been put back several times but is scheduled to come into force in April 2019.
AgeID spokesman James Clark explained to The Metro: ‘When a user first visits a site protected by AgeID, a landing page will appear with a prompt for the user to verify their age before they can access the site.’
‘Each website will create their own non-pornographic landing page for this purpose.’
When someone first clicks on a site, they’ll be asked to register with AgeID and verify their age using a Mobile SMS, credit card, passport, or driving licence.
Users will then be able to use their AgeID username or password to access all porn sites that use AgeID – though some may use different age verification systems.
Clark said: ‘It is a one-time verification, with a simple single sign-on for future access. If a user verifies on one AgeID protected site, they will not need to perform this verification again on any other site carrying AgeID.’