These are the risks of the Cartera Digital, the Spanish passport to watch porn

The Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Service has launched a project called Digital Wallet that seeks to be a kind of digital DNI for Spanish citizens. In the future, when the project stabilizes and grows, the registration certificate, academic titles and much more will be available there. However, its primary function is much more controversial.

The launch of this program is accompanied by one of its functions, the first, which consists of allowing verify a person’s age when using online services in which the majority is important. Yes, it is designed so that minors cannot access web pages with adult content.

This application has generated a great media uproar and, in the future, surely also social, due to its implications. It is not currently operational, but it will be able to be used at the end of the summer, although its installation is obviously not mandatory. At the moment it is limited to web pages hosted in Spanish territory, but later should apply to any adult website accessible from Europe.

Ridiculous limits

The application is designed to require verification of the user’s identity when they want to access a website with adult content from Spanish territory. At first, this will only work for Spanish pages, but in the future it may be applied to other types of websites. The problem is that it is not difficult to overcome these limits.

VPNs are services that allow you to emulate the location of your connection; in other words, they allow a website to think that you are located in another country. It is currently used for many things, from cheaper YouTube Premium to the ability to use Google services in China.

If even in a country like China, with a computer infrastructure that allows them to have almost their own version of the Internet, it is difficult to restrict the use of these VPNs, in Europe it seems impossible. It is true that this makes access to this type of content difficult, but it does so especially for users who are less familiar with these technologies and are not usually the youngest. In addition, this application would not affect other applications such as OnlyFans or private WhatsApp or Telegram groups, where young people mainly consume content.

Many experts and users say that this is not a real solution, as it was not the case in the UK when a similar solution was attempted. They are already at the next stage: debating whether to ban minors under the age of 16 from buying a mobile phone.

Dangers of the application

But just because Cartera Digital won’t fix the reported problems doesn’t mean it won’t create new ones, as Panda Security points out. The government’s development of the app doesn’t exempt it from possible data leaks or security breaches, as the recent DGT case demonstrates. But there are other problems.

Personal informations. One of the main problems is that there is a leak of personal data that exposes the users of this application. Since at first its only goal is to access adult websites, it is assumed that everyone who is registered has this as their ultimate goal.

Citizens Ranking. Knowing what kind of preferences users will have based on the websites they visit is another potential problem. The government should not be able to classify people in this way, and while it has no plans to do so, there is no indication that this will continue in the future.

Target of hackers. An app like this, with such a specific user profile to start with, is a perfect target for cybercriminals, as they will be able to extort users if they manage to get their hands on their data and force them to pay money in exchange for not making public that they consume pornography.

sexual predatorsLimiting minors’ access to pornography may be a good thing in principle, but it would also create black markets where sexual predators could be guaranteed that their victims would always be minors.