I am in favour of the requirements in the Online Safety Act which require platforms that publish some kinds of content to verify the age of their users.

It is also understandable why many people do not want to upload their photo, or a scan of their passport or credit card, to an age verification service. I do not want to do that either.

One option is for the government to provide an service which can optionally be used by platforms which need to verify the age of their users.

For example, a user could go to a free government-run website, and enter their name, and do a face scan. The government would check their existing records (passport, drivers’ licence, birth certificate, electoral register etc) to confirm the age of the user. If the government is able to confirm that the user is the person they say they are, and that they are an adult, it installs an encrypted token on the user’s device.

The token would provide evidence to a commercial platform or website that the user is an adult. It would not contain any other information such as name, age, location etc. So users would not be required to share additional information with the platform.

The Government could offer this as an optional service alongside commercial age verification systems, though my guess is that it would rapidy become dominant (because I would rather not share my information with commercial verifications services). Platforms could choose to accept this Government token as evidence of age, and they could also decide to accept other age verification services too.

Such a service would be simple and cheap for the Government to set up. It would leverage information that the Government already has, and it would enable citizens to comply quickly and easity with age verification systems without having to share additional information with third parties. It is, in short, a piece of digital public infrastructure.

This is one example of a general point. The Government can provide encrypted verification tokens this way for all kinds of requirements (right to work, driving licence, right to rent, safeguarding DBS, right to NHS care) that enable third parties to verify a person’s status without that person having to share any unnecessary information.