(Pocket-lint) – The UK government is to introduce new legislation to force porn websites to use genuine age verification measures if they wish to operate in the UK.
At present, many just have a simple pop-up asking whether a user is 18-years old or over, but one tap is all it takes to then view explicit content.
The new law, which forms part of the government’s forthcoming Online Safety Bill, will prohibit sites from viewing the UK unless they use a method of age verification, such as credit card entry or third-party verification service.
This is to protect children from accessing inappropriate images and videos, it claims.
The Online Safety Bill will be finalized and introduced to Parliament in the “next few months”, states the BBC. It will then need a majority vote by MPs to be made law.
It’s not the first time the government has proposed similar measures. In the early 2010s, it even mulled over banning internet pornography in the UK entirely, with the idea that ISPs would block porn sites at source, much like they do with torrent download URLs, such as Pirate Bay.
However, that was never widely supported and eventually overturned.
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On the new proposals, Digital Economy Minister, Chris Philp, said: “Parents deserve peace of mind that their children are protected online from seeing things no child should see.”
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Writing by Rik Henderson.
