verification

Discord wanted to implement an age verification system. Until the world came crashing down on him

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Discord has backtracked on one of his most controversial plans of recent years. The messaging and voice platform, with more than 200 million active users, has slowed down your system of global age verification until the second half of 2026 after its initial announcement sparked a firestorm of criticism. When people have started leaving in droves and looking for other alternatives, the company has thought twice. Chaos. Discord announced a few weeks ago which would implement an age verification system to ensure that adult content only reached adult users. The idea was that all accounts would start with a “teen-appropriate” setting by default, unless they could prove they were of legal age. The problem: The communication was so horrible that a significant part of the community understood that the platform was going to ask everyone for facial scans and ID documents in order to continue using it. The result was chaos. Distrust. In October of last year, Discord confirmed that had suffered a security breach at one of its third-party providers. This exposed sensitive data, including photographs of identity documents, of approximately 70,000 users. That background was very fresh when the announcement of the new system came. Added to this was that among the partners who were being considered to implement the verification Person appeareda company with financial ties to Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir, a company known for its contracts with US government immigration and surveillance agencies. And of course, for many users, this combination was simply unacceptable. What Discord says was really going to happen. In a release Posted on Tuesday, Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy stated that more than 90% of users would never have needed to verify anything, because most do not access age-restricted content or modify default security settings. In addition, it ensures that the platform already has internal systems capable of determining the age of majority of many users automatically, analyzing signals such as the age of the account, whether it has a linked payment method or the type of servers to which it belongs. According to Vishnevskiy, this system does not read messages or analyze the content posted by users. Recognizing mistakes, with nuances. “The way this landed led many of you to believe we were demanding facial scans and document uploads from everyone,” Vishnevskiy wrote. “That’s not what’s happening, but the fact that so many people believe it tells us that we failed at the most basic thing: clearly explaining what we’re doing and why.” That said, it is worth remembering what points out the media PC Gamer, since Discord did not make any of these concessions until after the avalanche of criticism. What changes now? The platform promises several things before relaunching the system globally. Among them, adding more verification options, including means of payment, publishing detailed information on its website about each third-party provider and their data practices, and requiring that any company that offers facial age estimation do so entirely on the user’s device, without sending biometric data to any server. On Persona, Discord confirms that it ran a limited test with them in the UK in January and decided not to continue, precisely because it didn’t meet that last requirement. A global address. Discord is not new, and it is happening in a much broader context. The United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil already have legislation that requires platforms to verify the age of their users to access adult content. Europe and several US states they go in the same direction. Discord argues that by building its own system, it can demonstrate to regulators that it is possible to verify age without collecting identity data. In countries where there is already a legal obligation, the system will remain active regardless of the global delay. Cover image | Discord and own assembly In Xataka | “We will not flood our ecosystem with soulless AI garbage.” We already know what Asha Sharma wants to do as CEO of Microsoft Gaming

The United Kingdom put an age verification to access PornHub. Immediately afterwards, its traffic plummeted by 77%

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Since the United Kingdom implemented age verification stricter access to explicit sexual content last July, under the Online Safety Act, traffic to pornographic websites has plummeted. Pornhub, the most visited adult site in the world, ensures that its visits from this country have decreased by 77%. Massive traffic reduction. According to Ofcom, the British communications regulator, visits to sites with pornographic content generally have decreased by almost a third within three months after the law comes into force. Google shows that searches for Pornhub have dropped by about half since then. The regulations require that anyone who accesses this type of website from the United Kingdom prove to be over 18 years old through verifications such as facial identification, email codes or credit card data. It must be taken into account that Pornhub is the nineteenth most visited website on the entire Internet, according to data from Similarweb, which gives dimension to the impact of these figures. The VPN effect complicates measurements. The drop in traffic does not necessarily mean that Brits have stopped consuming pornographic content. And there is a tool that makes actual measurement difficult of traffic from the UK: VPNs. The UK has become one of the fastest growing VPN markets in the world. According to data According to Cybernews, in the first half of 2025, more than 10.7 million downloads of VPN applications were recorded in the country, a figure that is already close to 16.65 million for all of 2024. Ofcom esteem that around a million people use VPN daily, tools that are especially useful for hiding the user’s real location and thus bypassing age controls. After the law came into force, VPN apps topped downloads in the British App Store, with at least one provider reporting an 1,800% increase in downloads. “It is likely that some of Pornhub’s ‘missing’ audience has not actually disappeared, but is being reclassified as non-British traffic,” explains Aras Nazarovas, cybersecurity researcher at Cybernews. cunequal compliance. Alex Kekesi, director of Aylo, parent company of Pornhub, explains BBC that the new rules are “unenforceable” and that many platforms benefit from ignoring them. It notes that Ofcom faces an “insurmountable task” trying to enforce the rules on some 240,000 adult platforms, visited by eight million users a month in the UK, while the regulator has only taken action against fewer than 70 sites for non-compliance. Kekesi assures that there are sites whose traffic “has grown exponentially” due to not complying with age verification, and has expressed concern about the content of some of these platforms, mentioning one that seemed to encourage searching for content with minors. Aylo affirms have shared information about these sites with Ofcom. The defense of the regulator. Ofcom defend that prioritizes the investigation of sites according to their risk and number of users, and that the increase in traffic can be precisely one of the factors that triggers an investigation. The organism holds that the 10 most popular platforms already have verification systems in place, representing 25% of all visits to adult content from the United Kingdom. The regulator also insists that more than three-quarters of the daily traffic to the 100 most visited websites goes to sites with age verification. “Sites that do not comply and put minors at risk can expect to face enforcement action,” he said. declared Ofcom. The regulator has launched investigations against 62 services suspected of ignoring the law. The debate over where to check. Pornhub proposes that age verification be done at the device level instead of web by web, arguing that it would be more effective and better protect privacy. Kekesi, who has traveled to the United Kingdom to meet with Ofcom and government officials, stands out That the British country is an exception, since Pornhub has blocked access in other jurisdictions that required age verification, such as France, its second largest market. The difference is that the United Kingdom allows sites to offer various verification methods, including email checks that do not require biometrics. However, experts such as Chelsea Jarvie, a cybersecurity researcher at the University of Strathclyde, they explain to the BBC that “for someone to be truly safe online we need different layers of controls throughout their browsing,” noting that no single approach is a “silver bullet.” The position of the British government. The authorities they have defended the regulator’s actions and have reaffirmed that protecting minors online is a “top priority” for ministers. “Where evidence shows that greater intervention is needed to protect minors, we will not hesitate to act,” the executive states. Ofcom affirms that the new law is fulfilling its primary purpose of preventing children from being able to “easily stumble upon pornography without searching for it.” “Our new rules end the era of an age-blind internet, when many sites and apps did not carry out any meaningful check to see if minors were using their services,” the regulator says. In Xataka | We already know how to retrieve the exact prompts that people use in AI models. It’s terrifying news

As of October 9, transfers in the EU will no longer be the same. A new bank verification enters into force

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You open the bank’s app, choose “Transfer,” you go, you write the name of the recipient and confirm. Today, October 7, 2025, if that name does not match the holder of the account, the usual thing is that the payment is executed without alerts. As of October 9, that everyday gesture changes. In the EU, starting with the entities of the euro area, the bank must check if the name you enter with that of the IBA before authorizing the shipment. The idea is simple, that money reaches who owes. Until now, European banks were not obliged to verify whether the beneficiary’s name coincided with the IBA before executing a transfer. The system was based only on the account number, which allowed payments to be processed even if the name was not correct. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, had developed verification mechanisms such as the “Iran-Naam Check”, but there was no common norm. The new European regulation corrects that disparity and establishes a uniform procedure for the entire union. Three possible messages. When the bank taught the name and the Iban, the answer may be one of three. Total coincidence. If the data fully coincide, the transfer will be validated without additional notices. Partial coincidence. If there are slight differences (a changed letter, an absent tilde or an abbreviated name) an alert will appear indicating partial coincidence. In that case, the user may review the data or continue under their responsibility. Without coincidence. If there is no coincidence, the system will warn that the data does not quote, without showing the real name of the holder for privacy reasons. WARNING, DO NOT BLOCK. Receiving an alert does not mean that the payment is blocked. The system is designed to inform, not to prevent the operation. Even if the name and the IBAN do not coincide, the user will be able to move forward with the transfer under their own responsibility. What changes is the transparency of the process. Before it was not known if the data fit; Now the bank will show you before executing the shipment. The final decision will remain yours. People and companies. The verification is based on the identification data of the account holder. If the beneficiary is a natural person, the system will compare its name and surname as it appears in the receiving bank. In the case of a legal person (for example, a company or association), the verification will focus on the company name or the commercial name. The usual errors, such as tildes, abbreviations or second denominations, can generate partial coincidences, but will not prevent the transfer, as we mentioned above. Standard, immediate and periodic. Verification will apply to both standard and immediate transfers, without additional cost for the user. One of the payment entities that have detailed how the process will work is Nickel. As explainedperiodic transfers scheduled before October 9, 2025 will not be subject to the beneficiary’s verification, although its execution is subsequent. Only the coincidence in the new orders created from that date and once, at the time of configuring them, will be verified. Absence of verification. As Nickel also explains, it can happen that the system fails to check the name with the Iban. This ruling, the company points out, may be due to communication problems between banks or specific technical limitations. In that case, the entity indicates that it will also proceed with the transfer, without the system confirming the coincidence of the beneficiary. Nickel herself advises to cancel the operation if there are doubts about the recipient, especially when it comes to high amounts or unusual accounts. The origin of the measure is in the rebound of bank fraud in the last decade. The European institutions, headed by the Commission and the ECB, considered that the system knows a mechanism for verifying the beneficiary to prevent erroneous payments and identity robberies. With the new standard, each transfer will include an automatic verification that acts as an informative filter. It does not delay shipping, but offers a warning that did not exist before. Vishing, Smishing, Romance and BEC. Behind the regulatory change are the fraud that proliferate in Europe and that banks try to stop new verification tools. He Vishingfor example, use false phone calls to impersonate bank employees or authorities. He SMISHING It arrives by SMS with messages that simulate being from the bank or a shipping company. They have also extended The romantic scamswhere the victim’s trust is gained before asking for money, and the CEO fraudin which an alleged manager orders urgent and confidential transfers. Beyond the differences between modalities, almost all bank scams share the same pattern. They use psychological manipulation techniques to generate urgency, fear or trust, and rely on identity supplant to seem legitimate. In most cases, they seek to make the user a bank transfer, taking advantage of emotions such as concern, empathy or hierarchical pressure. The verification of the beneficiary does not eliminate these risks, but it can act as a pause that allows to detect the deception in time. Before clicking “Send.” Stop for a few seconds can make a difference. Before confirming a transfer, it is convenient to calmly review the name and I went from the recipient, especially if it is a new account or a recent change. If the bank notice indicates a partial or without coincidence, the most prudent is to verify the data by a different channel (a direct call or an official website). And, given the minimal suspicion, canceling is always better than regretting. The new system also reaches companies and professionals who make frequent payments. Each transfer will require confirming the coincidence between the name of the beneficiary and the IBAN, which will add a small step to the usual process. For companies, it can be an opportunity to reinforce their treasury controls and detect internal fraud attempts or supplier supplant. It is not a lock, but a filter of verification. What banks, what countries, what deadlines. The … Read more

The age verification to see porn starts in the United Kingdom. The question is how

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There was a time when the user only had to click on the “I am older than 18 years” button to access any porn page without problems. It is a measure whose effectiveness could easily put into question and that, from today, is the thing of the past, At least in the United Kingdom. Because from today, July 25, all websites that house pornographic content will have to implement “strict age controls.” And no, the United Kingdom does not seem willing to walk with little girls. Eh, kid, how old are you? According to exposes OFCOM (the Regulatory Agency for the United Kingdom Communications Services), “Until now it has been too easy for children to see harmful content”, including pornography. According to the agency, 8% of children between eight and 14 access this type of websites at least once a month, although more striking it turns out that 3% of children between eight and nine years old do. To stop this situation, the United Kingdom approved in 2023 the Online Safety Acta set of laws that “imposes a series of new obligations on social media companies and search services, making them more responsible for the safety of their users on their platforms.” Among them, indeed, age verification. Pornhub age verification systems, XVIDEOS, XNXX and Stripchat | Image: Xataka As? Ofcom ensures that their function is not to prevent adults from accessing legal pornography, but preventing minors from doing so. To do this, platforms and apps will have to have an age verification process that is “technically precise, solid, reliable and fair.” What methods exactly? Ofcom proposes seven: Estimation of the facial age: The user shows his face in a photo or video and is analyzed to estimate age. Banking verification: The verification service accesses the bank information and confirms whether the owner of the account is of legal age Digital Identity Services: In the European Union it would be, for example, Eid. Credit card verification: since only of legal age can have a credit card. Estimation based on the age of an email: The user provides an email and the technology analyzes the online services in which it has been used, as banks or public service providers, to estimate age. Age verification through the network operator: The verification system proves that there are no age filters applied to the mobile phone. Comparison of identity documents with photography: A photo of an official document and a normal photo are uploaded and compared to verify the age. Needless to say, companies will not only have to implement these systems, but to take action on the matter in the event that users try to skip them. One of the reasonable doubts can be the use of a VPN To access from another country. Using VPNS is not illegal and, therefore, remains in the hands of parents or guardians control the use that minors can make of them. It is undoubtedly the weak point of the system. The sanctions. In the event that a platform does not implement the required measures, ofcom can impose sanctions of up to 18 million pounds or 10% of total revenues worldwide, which is greater. Moreover, in certain cases, ofcom can ask a court to impose sanctions through third parties AKA request that a telecommunications operator block or restrict access to the web. The challenge is on social platforms, which will also have to implement the necessary measures to avoid access to harmful content Harmful content. Avoid access to porn, yes, but also to the harmful content such as related to eating disorders, suicide or self -inflicted damage. That content is not on the porn websites, but It can be found on much more mundane platforms such as WhatsApp, Discord, Reddit, Instagram, Tiktok, X, Facebook or YouTube. These platforms will also have to implement the corresponding measures, which is a capital challenge whose tour is still to be seen. Among the platforms that have already taken measures are Pornhubother minor pornographic sites, Bluesky, Discord, Grindr, Reddit and X. Ofcom is aware that social networks are an important gateway to porn and He thinks that “algorithms must be controlled and configured for children, so that the most harmful material is blocked.” This is what, from now on, you will see all British users by accessing Pornhub | Image: Xataka Therefore, from the agency they have launched a review program on Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snapchat, Tiktok and YouTube. Through this program, ofcom analyzes “if they have effective means to know who their children’s users are; how to identify their content moderation tools the types of harmful content for children; the effectiveness with which they have configured their algorithms to block the most harmful content in the feeds of children; and how they have prevented children from being contacted by unknown adults.” A global trend. Attempts to limit access to porn by minors are not new. They have centuries among usin fact, but in recent years they have intensified. The clearest example has it on our own borders with the Beta Digital Portfolio (better known as “pajorto”) and with the European proposal Framed in eidas2. Cover image | Xataka In Xataka | France is the most radical country against technology among children. And now it plans something extreme: prohibit social networks

Investigate Pornhub for not complying with age verification

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A click on a yellow box that says “I am 18 years of age or older.” That is all the age verification that Pornhub makes, one of the largest pornographic content websites in the world. And indeed, it is not enough, at least for the European Commission. And it is not in Pornhub, Stripchat, Xnxx and Xvideos, websites all of them that, from now on, They are being investigated by the European Commission for “suspicions of gaps of the digital service acts”. Context. One of the objectives of the European Act Digital Act, AKA DSA, is to protect minors from certain types of network content. The pornographic, among them and in particular. Since December 2023, Pornhub, Stripchat and Xvideos are considered Vlops (Vary Large Online Platforms), that is, platforms that have an average of 45 million monthly users and, therefore, have additional obligations. Since December 2023, Pornhub (among other websites) has been considered a Very Large Online Platform and, as such, has additional obligations What obligations? In order to concern this text, Vlops must offer greater protection to minors. According to the European Commission, “Vlop must design their services, including their interfaces, recommendation systems and terms and conditions, to address and prevent risks for the well -being of minors.” They must also offer “palliative measures to protect the rights of the child and prevent minors from accessing online pornographic content, even with age verification tools.” In other words, which must offer mechanisms to ensure that minors do not access adult content. Among those mechanisms is, for example, age verification. It is a fairly complex issue, which has not been exempt from criticism and that He has been on the table for more years. Completely impassable | Image: Xataka What happened. That the European Commission has taken the magnifying glass to take a look at what Pornhub, Stripchat, Xnxx and Xvideos are doing to prevent minors from seeing porn. As reflected in the commission in the releaseinvestigations focus on “the risks for the protection of minors, including those related to the absence of effective age verification measures.” The preliminary research carried out by the European agency suggests these platforms have not implemented “appropriate and provided measures to guarantee a high level of privacy, safety and protection of minors” or risk mitigation measures, “in particular through adequate tools for verification of age,” says the Commission. Image | Shane Uchi What could happen? That the European Commission opens the investigation does not mean that these companies are guilty. If it is, something that will be resolved later, they would face a sanction of up to 6% of their global annual turnover. In the case of Pornhub, perhaps the best known, the website is owned by Aylo (previously Mindgeek) and its estimated income are around 500 million dollars annually. The potential fine would therefore be about 30 million dollars. And what systems are there? We have visited the four websites mentioned above and then we show the mechanisms for protection of minors: a screen where we accept that we are (or not) minors. There is no verification. Interestingly, stripcams links a kind of guide for parents to teach to configure parental control via Google SafeSearch or in iOS/Android. However, the DSA establishes that it is the websites that must offer the prevention mechanisms, not leave the ball on the parents’ roof. Pornhub age verification systems, XVIDEOS, XNXX and Stripchat | Image: Xataka In any case, and as far as Stripchat concerns specifically, the commission has announced that it has lost its status of Vlop and will cease to be considered as such in four months. However, general obligations will continue to apply. In that sense, the Commission has commented that there are many pornographic platforms that are not so large and in which, therefore, national laws are applied. Thus, a working group has been established with the objective of better coordinating the actions between the different countries. Doors to the field. Throughout history there has been countless attempts To restrict access to the pornographic content, but the reality is that blocking access to content available on the Internet without going through an exhaustive age verification is … complex. Not because blocking a website is impossible, which is not at all, but because pornographic content can be found on any platform. Porn websites are the best known distribution platforms, but this type of content can be found on social networks, platforms such as Reddit, in Telegram channels or in WhatsApp groups. Limiting access to websites is a step, but it will not eliminate the root problem: accessing online porn is extremely simple. Digital portfolio operation scheme | Image: Government of Spain Pajorto. The Government of Spain announced last year Beta digital portfolio creationbetter known as “pajorto” although its implementation could be expanded until November 2026 (which is the maximum date to comply with the European regulations eidas2which forces member states to have digital identity systems), it was supposed to be ready by the end of this year. Interestingly, Cumlauder, a well -known Spanish website, He advanced to the “parsport” with a system based on or verification of DNI or through a selfie. And speaking of Spain … According to the then Minister of Digital Transformation, José Luis Escrivá, Beta Aka Digital Portfolio the “Pajorte” was being a “study in Europe and the same within a year all of Europe is applying it”. In that sense, the European Commission has said that it is in “in close collaboration with the Member States, it is developing an application of verification of the white marked age, aimed at covering the void until the EU digital purse is available at the end of 2026” Well According to EFE Agencythat quotes sources from the aforementioned Ministry, the European Commission I would have chosen Spain for the pilot project of said verification tool. The idea would be to offer the national system as a base and that the rest of the countries can adapt it to their own contexts. After … Read more

Goal has taken the first step to dismantle its external verification system. And he has done it with an X algorithm

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Shortly before Donald Trump returned to the White House, Mark Zuckerberg announced What a goal would end his Third Party Data Verification Program And I would bet on a system of community notes in the purest X style, the social network of Elon Musk, one of the leading allies of the new president. With this decision, goal sought Leave in the hands of users The task of pointing out and contextualizing misinformation on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. When Zuckerberg made the announcement, it was clear that, although the company pointed out with this new approach, its implementation would gradually begin in the United States. There were no indications of a possible deployment in the European Union, where the Digital Services Law could mean an obstacle. Now, with more details about the initial launch, we can get a better idea of ​​its operation. Fixed goal in the calendar the beginning of its new initiative. The social networks giant He said that It will begin to test the community notes on March 18. That is, in less than a week, this new approach will take its first steps. As planned, the deployment will be gradual and will be limited, for now, to the United States. From that day, the program taxpayers will begin to leave their collaborations. How will the system work? The community notes system in Meta allows users to add context to publications that can be misleading or need additional information. However, not any note is published immediately: there is an evaluation process that, as explained by Meta, seeks to ensure that contributions are useful and reflect different perspectives. A collaborator detects a publication on Facebook, Instagram or Threads that needs context. For example, a viral post says: “Bats are completely blind and depend only on sounding to move.” The collaborator writes an explanatory note. It must have a maximum of 500 characters and include a link to a reliable source. Example: “It is a common myth. Bats are not blind; They have good vision and combine ecolocation, hearing and smell to adapt to different environments. More info here: (Link). “ Other collaborators check the note and vote if it is useful. It is not published automatically. You must have the support of people with different perspectives, not just with a majority. If the note receives enough support, it is published. It appears next to the original publication to give context. The publication about bats is still visible, but with the explanatory note. Goal will use the X algorithm. The company led by Mark Zuckerberg has chosen to use, in a first stage, the algorithm of the notes of the community of X. This system, which promotes a similar function in the social network previously known as Twitter, is open source and It is available in githubwhich allows anyone to audit and reuse it. However, the adoption of the X algorithm by goal is not a definitive step. The company plans to take it as a basis for developing its own version. “As our own version develops, we may explore different or tight algorithms to support the way in which the community notes are classified and described.” No scope penalty. Goal ensures that its new system against misinformation will not punish the distribution of publications. Unlike the old fact verifiers program, where the marked contents could lose visibility, the community notes will only add context without affecting who can see them or how far they can go. But the notes will not appear yet. As we have said, the community notes system will begin to take its first steps on Facebook, Instagram and Threads this month, but users will not see them yet. It is an evaluation phase. The idea is that the deployment occurs has taken the first step to dismantle its external verification system. And he has done it with the X algorithm when the company is sure it works as a wait. During this period, they plan to make more adjustments and improve the system. Old system verification labels will continue to appear in the United States until the new system begins to deploy generalized in that country. And what will happen in Spain? Although the Meta External Verification Program began in 2016, did not land in Spain until 2019. In the country, the multinational continues to have verifiers such as Newtral, Maldita.es and AFP, which continue with their usual work. Meta ensures that its intention is to expand community notes globally, but it remains to be seen how possible challenges related to European legislation. Images | Goal | Gage Skidmore In Xataka | Goal has fired 35,000 workers in five years. And many of them fear having entered their “black lists”

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