Pornhub now uses Apple’s age verification feature in the UK

I guess that’s a “benefit” of the Apple ecosystem that won’t make it into a press release from the Cupertino company: Pornhub’s parent company has announced that it will rely on Apple’s age verification feature for its UK web visitors…

Apple Age Verification

Apple first launched its own age verification feature in the UK in March, before rolling it out to other countries. The move aims to comply with a growing trend in age verification legislation around the world for access to age-restricted websites and apps.

The company accidentally released it in a beta version of iOS, which gave me a first chance to test it. In my case, it only took 30 seconds to confirm that I had held an Apple account long enough to verify that I was at least 18 years old.

Once the official launch, not everyone found the process to be so transparent, but Apple later announced additional verification methods.

Pornhub is using it now

The UK Online Safety Act requires adult websites to implement effective age verification methods. This was intended to prevent under-18s from accessing age-inappropriate content, but of course really only ensured that teenagers knew how to use a VPN to spoof their presence in another country.

Not surprisingly, few visitors to these websites were willing to provide credit card information or photo ID to verify their age, and Engadget reports that Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, now accepts Apple’s own age verification status.

“In our view, Apple’s UK device-level age verification update provides one of the strongest, hardest-to-evade protections currently available to prevent minors from accessing age-inappropriate content,” Aylo wrote. Now age-verified iOS users in the UK will “enjoy a standard adult user experience” when visiting Pornhub.

Apple has reluctantly participated in the age verification process, but I argued that I would much rather trust the iPhone maker to do it in a privacy-protecting way than have to rely on the processes that random app developers choose to adopt.

Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash