Minors’ access to adult pornographic content is a problem in many countries and Europe is no exception. More than 70% of minors access this type of content and the age of initiation is increasingly low, currently around 12 years old. The Ministry of Digital Transformation and Civil Service has launched a project in the test phase called Digital Wallet which allows, among other things, to verify a person’s age when using services in which the age of majority is important.
The administration’s intention is prevent minors from circumventing access restrictions as currently happens when an online service asks for age before allowing access. A simple click of the mouse or on the mobile screen is enough to bypass this age verification.
With the Digital Wallet, the administration wants these services to connect to the system to be able to validate that in fact the user who wishes to enter is of legal age. If validation does not take place, access to the website will not be permitted.
Personal informations
One of the problems with age verification systems is that they sometimes need to have access to users’ personal data. In this case, the ministry wanted to emphasize that The digital wallet will not provide any personal information of any kind to the platformsonly the validation that the age of the dream is greater than 18 years. In fact, the age of the applicant is not even sent, simply the confirmation that, being equal to or greater than 18 years, he can access this type of content.
To ensure that the user’s personal data cannot be obtained illegally, the system will use a dual-key system, one public and one private. The latter never leaves the device on which the application is installed, so its security is secure, at least as far as capture in transmissions goes.
The Minister of Digital Transformation and Public Service, José Luis Escriva, with the Director General of Public Governance, Carmen Cabanillas, during the presentation of the Beta digital portfolio.
Of course, to access adult web pages, the device will not need to be installed on the applicationwhich makes sense on smartphones and tablets, but would leave access from computers and other devices hanging. The mobile app can provide access via a code to access adult pages on other devices that don’t have the app installed.
Limits of use
When the digital wallet is used to access a pornographic website, the system establishes a delay between the generation of the request and its entry. This delay is 2 minutes.after which the session will be closed and the process will have to be restarted.
Digital Wallet Interface
Free Android
These adult credentials are not unlimited. The digital wallet has a limit of 30 identifierswhich are used to access the various pages intended for adults. This limitation is not such that new keys are generated when necessary, but this number prevents web pages and services from tracking the identity of users, even without names.
Content providers that require validation can be whitelisted if they request it from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Civil Service, the same thing that happens with issuers of securities, an aspect that the government has not yet explored in depth. This is important, because the security of a project like this is crucial. Recent cases like that of the DGT do not leave citizens at ease.
The ace affected web pagesContrary to what one might expect, not all of them have adult content, but rather those based in Europe. Foreign pages and services, which are the most consumed by Spaniards, will not be affected for the moment. Of course, the Director General of Public Governance, Carmen Cabanillas, indicated that The ministry’s plans are “much more ambitious”.
It will arrive after summer
The application is available but not yet operational, and It will be activated throughout this year 2024Europe anticipates the European Union’s requirement that all online services will be required to verify the age of their users before granting access. In fact, it was already known that Europe was working on this project and was not the first European country to do something similar.
This application will be useful for many other things, serving as a kind of digital identificationbut for now the main use will be to control minors’ access to pornography. Little by little, we should expect the appearance of new features and functions that allow better management of the different tasks or actions to be carried out digitally, as is the case with My Citizen Folder.
