New laws will require porn watchers to prove their age

Porn watchers will have to provide hard evidence showing that they are over 18 years of age

Anyone wishing to view pornography online would have to prove that they are over 18, as part of the Digital Economy Act that will come into force in the UK as of April this year.

The new age verification law does not specify how the websites are to go about executing the process, so IT companies have began to develop solutions that will confirm the ages of users.

One such company is MindGeek, which runs some of the most popular porn sites in the world. Its new age verification system, AgeID, will confirm the age of users and log which sites are visited.

“AgeID has been built from the ground up with data protection, data minimisation and the principles of privacy by design at its core, whilst also complying with the GDPR. This is why we do not store any personal data entered during the age verification process,” a spokesperson for MindGeek told SkyNews, adding that the encrypted nature of the system means that data cannot be exposed in case of a hack.