Age veryfication laws - IPB integration - where/when?

[alex1981]

Situation:

Age veryfication laws with third party tools come in to power. 

16+ statest in USA already passed this laws https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-resources/state-avs-laws/
USA: face scan, face+ID, digital id

France from january 4 2025 (partial) and april 2025 (full): face scan, face+id

UK april 2025: face+id

Poland 2025: not biometrical

Spain, Italy soon. not yet announced

ALL EU: digital goverment profile but not yet announced date.

 

My forum contains some adult content, and as a result, it will be subject to age verification using apps such as YOTI. 

A lot of people use IPB for forums that contain only pornographic content or adults only content

Given this, I can't imagine that IPB hasn't planned some kind of integration with services like YOTI (or similar ones), as otherwise, it will lose many customers.

My question is whether such an integration exists (because I can't find it), and if not, when will it be available?

 

[Randy Calvert]

Given the highly niche use for this, I would not expect IPS to go beyond what they do now with making users confirm their age (not verify with third party services). If this is important for your community, I would suggest working with a third party developer. 

IPS5.0 is feature locked so i would not expect them to even look at new features until most likely Q2 honestly and I would be highly surprised if this would be anywhere in the priority queue at that point. 

[Marc]

Before responding, bear in mind, this is based on nothing but some quick searches and my own personal opinion. But this would be my take on it personally.

Adding integration for things would tend to be something we would do when they are items affecting a large number of our customer base, whereby there is no other option available to implement. We have some very large customers, and as far as Im aware, this is not something that has been requested. The most likely reasoning being that this either simply hasnt been implemented in many places (so the rules arent even known as of yet), or there are already tools available.

Just using your list as an example

• 16+ statest in USA already passed this laws https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-resources/state-avs-laws/
  USA: face scan, face+ID, digital id
  
  Just clicking on the first link there seems to indicate face scan etc isn't nessesary (certainly not in all states anyway, from what Im reading). However you are looking at 16 out of 50 states.
   

  Quote

  Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall be held liable if the entity fails to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.

   

• France from january 4 2025 (partial) and april 2025 (full): face scan, face+id
   

  Quote

  Not seen anything in there related to face ID or face scan. Of course I havent looked extensively. April 11th seems to be a public consultation on this

   

• UK april 2025: face+id
  
  This appears to be incorrect from what I can see
   

  Quote

  To prevent minors from accessing ‘harmful’ content, sites will have to verify the age of visitors, either by asking for government-issued documents or using biometric data, such as face scans, to estimate their age.

   

• Poland 2025: not biometrical
  
  Is not biometric, there is nothing really stopping this being possible now. You could simply stop people being allowed access to content of your choosing before providing ID if you wanted to do so. 

 

• Spain, Italy soon. not yet announced
  ALL EU: digital goverment profile but not yet announced date.
  
  Since these are not implemented, there isnt anything to implement our end even if we wanted to. After all, what would we add? We could add integration only to find its not suitable.

 

If you look at just the EU and US here, you have to bear in mind, as we stand, there are 34 out of 50 US states without any requirement (based on the above), and 26 out of 27 EU member states without any requirement.

Dont get me wrong, Im not saying this isnt something we wouldnt look into integration for in the future. Nor am I saying we will. However I think we can safely say that at present we dont actually know what requirements would even be needed.