UK delays mandatory age verification to late 2018 for accessing commercial pornographic websites

In a bid to make the internet browsing safer for children, UK is planning to introduce laws related to ‘commercial’ pornographic websites. [caption id=“attachment_702408” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters.[/caption] According to Department of Digital Media, Culture and Sport, UK has decided to bring age verification a mandatory clause before viewing a pornographic website by the end of 2018. The British Board of Film Certification has been made the regulator. It will also draw guidelines for various pornographic websites. It has been reportedly said that violation of this clause would be a punishable offence, where the user would have to pay up to 250,000 GBP. This policy was introduced in 2017. But it met with criticism in 2018 by privacy advocates who argued that since this information would be stored in a database, it is vulnerable to security threats. A BBC report suggests that if this data were to come out, it would expose the internet habits of people. Even MindGeek which owns RedTube, PornHub amongst others had reportedly brought the age check factor on its website. Moreover, Germany has been using this verification tool since 2015. Germany uses verification tools such as driver’s license, passport, mobile SMS, and credit card information for accessing websites with pornographic content. For the guidelines to come into the picture, it is expected to take some time. The workflow for implementing the age verification system has not been mentioned by the Department of Digital Media, Culture and Sport just yet.