For the UK? From what I understand, I think UK citizens are not allowed a credit card unless your 18. Which you would have been KYC’d for with your bank or whoever, so Apple are probably not required to.
I’ve come from iOS to GOS. Does it have all of Apples shiny bells and whistles? No, but do you feel genuinely feel private and secure? I absolutely do, and I would recommend GOS to anyone.
Continuing to find what information is available about this. An Apple support page now reports this, under “If you choose not to confirm your age” in their support docs:
If you choose not to confirm your age when prompted, you can continue to use your device – but you need to confirm before you can turn off certain safety settings or download apps that are rated 18+.
Note the last part, which calls back to the initial implementation in the betas for 26.4. The intention, whether or not it is deployed in current versions of iOS for the UK and other affected countries, is to stop installs of 18+ apps for “underage” users. “Underage” in this case now of course is unceremoniously referring to children and unverified users.
As a longtime Apple device user, suffice to say I am pissed. I have submitted feedback to them a couple of weeks ago, though I don’t expect a response.
I wouldn’t expect there’s much you can do with VPN and/or setting up Apple accounts using other countries as the home without a valid address which isn’t going to be available to the vast majority of people. Granted I haven’t tried this, so there may be more I don’t know.
What’s even more concerning is that the U.K. government haven’t actually asked Apple to do this, nor is it “U.K. law”. Where Apple say “This is required by law” it is not, in fact, required by U.K. law. Apple is doing a lot of ‘pre-empting’ here, which is disappointing and has grave consequences.
Funnily enough I mentioned this in my feedback to them. You’re absolutely right that it’s not UK law, and the implementation is terrible.
I can see how Apple might want to get ahead with providing a central, private (sort of) authority on whether or not a user is over age within their given jurisdiction and send that signal to services that require it, preventing hundreds of other businesses independently holding that data. Safari could reasonably publish that for sites to read.
What they chose to do is not that. Apple chose to arbitrarily limit my devices from accessing websites that they deem to be only for adults, and enforcing the scanning (on-device or no) of every image my device receives or captures with the onboard hardware (yes, they’re reading all input to Photos.app). Question is, what constitutes an adult website? Does bet365.com count as an adult website? Unfortunately no, it appears that it doesn’t.
Nonsense rules for a poorly designed implementation of what the UK government might want, rather than complying with the law as is stated.
Well isn’t it somewhat good that Apple is trying to make this into the intended age verification rather than identity verification?
I’d contest that there’s a meaningful distinction. These “age verification” techniques are tied to gov ID or KYC payment methods. Either way, inherently deanonymizing
No, not really. Apple, as far as we know, have not been required to require proof of age, nor is it a requirement under U.K. law - but yet here we are. One of those options is quite literally providing identification documents…
I see where you’re going with this to a degree and by them implementing this now is preventing worse, onerous requirements later on. But that ‘forward thinking’ is a weakness and Apple are showing the U.K. government that they are ‘on their side’ and will bow down to their requirements.
That being said, how can we be sure the insidious U.K. government haven’t required this? You will recall with the encryption furore - specifically ADP - that Apple removed this for new U.K. users. This was following closed door discussions and where the U.K. government gagged Apple from talking about it. So, perhaps Apple are now required to implement this? Perhaps the U.K. government have used the same tactics they did when it came to ADP.
I don’t think we’ll ever get to the exacting truth of the matter due to the underhand pernicious tactics the totalitarian U.K. government employ.
In agreement with @WhyRhy
Remember that, regardless of “age” or “identity” verification, the standard for freedom on the internet is shifting. If your device sends the wrong signal to a website, you’ll be locked out.
Yes, ID verification is worse than an age signal, but age verification is brand new and still unacceptable. This is about freedom as much as it is about overreaching data collection and authoritarianism. Not to double up on a previously shared link, but the Big Brother Watch response from Silkie Carlo says it very well: Apple’s New iPhone Update Is Restricting Internet Freedom in the UK — Big Brother Watch