Last week, the European Commission launched an investigation into the largest adult entertainment websites. The inquiry aims to determine whether these platforms have taken adequate measures to restrict minors' access to age-inappropriate content.
Hidden within the Commission's press release was an almost offhand mention of a new app planned for age verification across the European Union.
Details were scarce - so we dug in. We reached out to multiple public agencies to uncover more about this app and how it's expected to work.
Our investigation ultimately led us to Finnish authorities, who were able to shed some light on the matter.
In Finland, the initiative is being driven by the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman, which is responsible for overseeing the processing of personal data in the country. The office confirmed to AfterDawn that an age verification solution is indeed headed to Finland.
The solution will come in the form of a smartphone app, slated for official release in June 2025 and set to be rolled out across the country in October.
While the Office didn't go into technical details, the Commission's broader guidance suggests the app will rely on strong user authentication. Many EU countries already employ national digital ID systems for securely verifying identity - often used for logging into government services.
This marks a major departure from approaches in the United States and Australia, where no national digital identity infrastructure currently exists. In those regions, age verification for adult content (and, in Australia's case, social media age restrictions as well) has required less elegant solutions, such as scanning driver's licenses - or even using AI to estimate a user's age based on facial features.
The EU's solution will be uniform across all member states, and its source code and architecture are already publicly available. The app was developed by T-Scy, the company that won the Commission's tender for the project.
According to the Commission, the app will not share any personal data with the website requesting age verification. Instead, it will only transmit a simple boolean confirmation: whether or not the user is of legal age. In other words, users' privacy remains intact - the government-run app verifies identity without disclosing any unnecessary details to the site in question.
Each EU country will release its own version of the app, potentially with some local customizations.
However, the solution is only a stopgap. By 2026, the EU plans to launch the so-called Digital Identity Wallet. The EU Digital Identity Wallet will offer a broader, more versatile solution, capable of holding everything from driver's licenses to full ID cards and more. Information shared from the wallet will be highly selective - so when accessing adult sites, for instance, only proof of age could be shared, while dealings with government agencies might require more extensive data like a full ID number.
Age verification requirement will apply only to the largest online services - namely, to Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos.
Details were scarce - so we dug in. We reached out to multiple public agencies to uncover more about this app and how it's expected to work.
Our investigation ultimately led us to Finnish authorities, who were able to shed some light on the matter.
In Finland, the initiative is being driven by the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman, which is responsible for overseeing the processing of personal data in the country. The office confirmed to AfterDawn that an age verification solution is indeed headed to Finland.
The solution will come in the form of a smartphone app, slated for official release in June 2025 and set to be rolled out across the country in October.
While the Office didn't go into technical details, the Commission's broader guidance suggests the app will rely on strong user authentication. Many EU countries already employ national digital ID systems for securely verifying identity - often used for logging into government services.
This marks a major departure from approaches in the United States and Australia, where no national digital identity infrastructure currently exists. In those regions, age verification for adult content (and, in Australia's case, social media age restrictions as well) has required less elegant solutions, such as scanning driver's licenses - or even using AI to estimate a user's age based on facial features.
The EU's solution will be uniform across all member states, and its source code and architecture are already publicly available. The app was developed by T-Scy, the company that won the Commission's tender for the project.
According to the Commission, the app will not share any personal data with the website requesting age verification. Instead, it will only transmit a simple boolean confirmation: whether or not the user is of legal age. In other words, users' privacy remains intact - the government-run app verifies identity without disclosing any unnecessary details to the site in question.
Each EU country will release its own version of the app, potentially with some local customizations.
However, the solution is only a stopgap. By 2026, the EU plans to launch the so-called Digital Identity Wallet. The EU Digital Identity Wallet will offer a broader, more versatile solution, capable of holding everything from driver's licenses to full ID cards and more. Information shared from the wallet will be highly selective - so when accessing adult sites, for instance, only proof of age could be shared, while dealings with government agencies might require more extensive data like a full ID number.
Age verification requirement will apply only to the largest online services - namely, to Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos.
