{"id":54794,"date":"2025-08-02T11:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T11:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/54794\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T11:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T11:01:07","slug":"how-to-safely-verify-your-age-on-x-prove-your-age-without-risking-your-personal-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/54794\/","title":{"rendered":"How to safely verify your age on X \u2013 prove your age without risking your personal data"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re browsing from the UK, you\u2019ve probably heard about the Online Safety Act.<\/p>\n

Rolled out on the 25th of July this year, the latest implementation of the Online Safety Act requires online service providers to use age verification technology<\/a> to ensure that children and vulnerable adults do not have access to harmful online content.<\/p>\n

Most large social media services, including X, have implemented a verification system asking you to hand over your ID or take a selfie. If you\u2019re not comfortable with that, you\u2019ll be stuck viewing a diluted timeline where any content deemed as \u201cpotentially harmful\u201d by the UK government won\u2019t be accessible.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Read on, and we\u2019ll discuss the privacy implications of X\u2019s age verification implementation and whether it\u2019s possible to hand your details over in a safe way.<\/p>\n

How X estimates your age \u2013 and the risks this poses<\/p>\n

X uses several different factors to automatically guess your age to try and minimise the number of users required to go through verification.<\/p>\n

An account creation date before 2012, and previous identity verification for businesses and individuals automatically indicates you\u2019re an adult, so no further action is necessary.<\/p>\n

X then moves on to estimation methods if it has no concrete data on how old you are.<\/p>\n

These include email and social network-based evaluation, but there\u2019s little detail on exactly how X uses these to work out how old you are. However, neither method seems to entail much risk.<\/p>\n

If these methods fail, you\u2019re required to prove your age by submitting either a selfie or a picture of your government-issued ID. X hasn\u2019t rolled out these methods yet, but plans to soon.<\/p>\n

This is where it starts getting concerning. X has provided next to no information directly concerning which partners will be used to process these applications. However, in the past, X has used Au10tix, Stripe, and Persona for other ID verification purposes, so they\u2019ll likely be used in the future.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the issue? Personal information is a goldmine for cyber criminals. Passport and driving license scans can be used to impersonate you across the entirety of the internet. Au10tix has already been compromised<\/a> once in 2024. It\u2019s now far more worthwhile for hackers to target sites that implement ID verification, as the potential upside for them is huge if they can intercept your personal information in transit.<\/p>\n

How to safely prove your age on X <\/p>\n

If you want to verify your age on X, you will have to submit some form of personal information, such as a driver’s license, passport, or a facial scan, which will end up in the hands of both X and its partners.<\/p>\n

Although most providers should be secure, the scramble for online providers to comply, or face up to 10% fines, means there’s no guarantee that data safety will be a priority, and as such, you can never be sure data you submit is safe.<\/p>\n

Using a VPN mitigates some of these risks. By encrypting your online traffic, you remove the possibility that your data can be intercepted and used maliciously by bad actors.<\/p>\n

Today’s best age verification VPN deals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re browsing from the UK, you\u2019ve probably heard about the Online Safety Act. Rolled out on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[191,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-54794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}