Britain To Initiate Online “Porn Ban’
The UK government will implement a “Porn Ban” nationwide on July 15, restricting access to online pornography for under 18s and those without age verification.
The announcement was made after being consistently mooted for the last four years.
Despite insisting that the new checks will be “rigorous”, no mention was made of how the system will be managed.
The UK regulator responsible for issuing age classification certificates and in some cases censoring film and video content, is the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) which has admitted that it is “not a silver bullet” as even the most mildly tech-savvy teenager can circumvent it using a virtual private network (VPN) which create ghost accounts on networks overseas.
VPN software made by Mindware, the firm behind some of world’s biggest porn sites, is now free and can be downloade from most smartphones and tablets.
In China. widely-known for its censoring of internet user access, VPNs that shield the online users real IP address, are widely used to access banneed sites like Facebook or Google.
What this does do is pose a problem about security and the lack of detail in the UK announcement suggests that British authorities have probably not completely thought through the practical techical issues. Or they have thought them through and found them insuperable.
What is known is that the BBFC will manage an age verification system whereby users can enter their bank details or passport information which be scanned and sent to any company hosting adult material. The problems with this should be obvious. The pornography industry is not known for carefully protecing user data, and especially how it manifests itself online. Dark Web operators could see this as an attractive opportunity to try and steal bank details of porn users in a country like the UK where privacy is king and usage is high?
Many in the UK press have claimed this a free speech issue, but authorities are right to protect underage and vulnerable minors.
Currently adult sites are encouraged, but not required, to ask if a user is over 18. This obviously does not work effectively at present althought the alcohol industry, which has been required to get age verification for liquor consumption for may years, has seen evidence of teen drinking rates have falling for the first time in decades.
A spokesman from BBFC said “determined teenagers will find ways to access pornography. However, it will mean young children can no longer stumble across porn on commercial pornographic websites.’ That is an admirable goal, but if a secure messaging platform like WhatsApp can be hacked, then an organisation like the BBFC most likely can be hacked too.
The intention of putting people’s private ID and financial information on a single BBFC platform, which will attract the interest of predatory hackers and be harmful or potentially disastrous to millions of people is certainly disconcerting.
By Jackson Mardon-Heath
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