Apple launches ’age assurance’ tech as US states mull social media laws

By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) -Apple on Thursday said it will introduce a way for parents to share the age of a child with app developers without revealing sensitive information such as birthdays or government identification numbers.

The move comes as a number of U.S. state and federal lawmakers consider age-verification laws for social media and other apps.

States, such as Utah and South Carolina, are currently debating laws that would require app store operators such as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google to check the ages of users.

That has set up a conflict in the tech industry over which party should be responsible for checking ages for users under 18 - app stores, or each individual app.

Meta (NASDAQ:META) , for instance, has long argued in favor of legislation requiring app stores to check ages when a child downloads an app.

Apple on Thursday said it does not want to be responsible for collecting sensitive data for those age verifications.

"While only a fraction of apps on the App Store may require age verification, all users would have to hand over their sensitive personally identifying information to us—regardless of whether they actually want to use one of these limited set of apps," Apple wrote in a whitepaper on its website.

As an alternative, Apple said it will roll out what it calls "age assurance." Using it, parents will be able to input a child’s age when setting up a child’s account.

The parent can then choose to allow the child to share what Apple calls a "declared age range" - rather than an exact birthday or other identifying information - with third-party app developers. The parent will have the ability to turn off age-range sharing.

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"This protects privacy by keeping parents in control of their kids’ sensitive personal information, while minimizing the amount of information that is shared with third parties," Apple said in its paper.

In a statement, Stephanie Otway, a Meta spokeswoman, said the Apple technology is "a positive first step" but it still requires the child to share age range data with the developer, which will make it more difficult for Meta to put to use.

"Parents tell us they want to have the final say over the apps their teens use, and that’s why we support legislation that requires app stores to verify a child’s age and get a parent’s approval before their child downloads an app,” Otway said.

Apple’s existing controls already require parental approval for children to download an app.

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