Today, Homo Digitalis joined EDRi and other 62 organisations and experts urge the European Commission to halt proposals for using age verification tools when implementing DigitalServicesAct and eIDAS.

Evidence and lived experiences show these tools are dangerous, discriminatory and unsafe:

-Exclusive: Document-based verification excludes those without IDs, worsening the digital divide
-Invasive: Their ‘accuracy’ relies on processing vast amounts of personal data, threatening our right to online anonymity
-Pose privacy risks: Age estimation methods often use sensitive data like biometrics, which are prone to errors & bias.
-Discriminatory: Biometric-based approaches can be biased, based on gender, race, or disability.

Age Verification tools aren’t a silver bullet for addressing children’s needs online. Read more in the open letter here.