Age verification is coming to app shops in Texas, which means that customers may quickly be required to offer some type of identification so as to obtain something from the Google Play and Apple App shops, whatever the app’s content material.
Earlier this week, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas App Retailer Accountability Act, which is about to take impact initially of subsequent yr. The brand new regulation, which purports to be about preserving youngsters safer on-line, has vital implications for consumer privateness and knowledge safety.
What can be required for app retailer age verification in Texas?
The Texas regulation would require Google and Apple to confirm the age of all customers earlier than they obtain any app by way of their app shops, even when the app has no delicate or age-specific content material. Mother and father must present consent for minors to obtain apps or make purchases, and app shops must verify that oldsters or guardians have the authorized authority to make these choices for his or her youngsters. App shops can even should share which age classes customers fall into (baby, younger teen, older teen, or grownup) with app builders.
Whereas the specifics are but to be decided, which means Google and Apple must accumulate some type of consumer identification, whether or not that is a driver’s license, passport, or different government-issued ID, or biometric knowledge, similar to a facial scan, for anybody utilizing their app shops in Texas. Much more documentation can be required for folks proving authorized guardianship of minor customers.
Utah handed an identical invoice earlier this yr making app shops chargeable for centralizing age verification, and whereas its necessities are barely much less onerous, they don’t seem to be significantly better in terms of your privateness.
How age verification compromises your privateness
Privateness specialists—in addition to each Apple and Google—have raised alarms concerning the implications of age verification, noting that requiring all customers to show over delicate private data included in data-rich paperwork that may show your age is a type of digital surveillance. It creates an identifiable document of on-line exercise and will increase the chance that the info can be used, shared, or bought (in contrast to bodily ID checks, that are momentary and impermanent).
Age verification additionally presents safety issues with how delicate consumer knowledge is collected and saved. Knowledge breaches are a reality of life in 2025, and people might have little or no (if any) information about whether or not and the way their data is used and saved with out their consent, and with out recourse whether it is compromised.
What do you assume to this point?
Aaron Mackey, free speech and transparency litigation director on the Digital Frontier Basis (EFF), notes that the Texas regulation does not have any built-in protections for consumer knowledge, similar to minimizing what’s collected and transmitted and for a way lengthy it’s retained. Plus, there are dangers current within the probability that app shops will make the most of third-party verification providers to adjust to the necessities, which means knowledge is obtainable to a number of events.
The EFF and the ACLU additionally argue that on-line age verification necessities violate customers’ First Modification rights, as they might make protected free speech inaccessible—if adults haven’t got a legitimate type of identification, or facial recognition inaccurately estimates age, or minors cannot get parental consent—or drive folks to decide on between shielding their privateness and being on-line.
“If I’ve to offer this stage of non-public data as a result of the federal government mandates it simply to obtain an app from an app retailer, I will be considerably fearful about what occurs to my knowledge, and I’d simply resolve to not really obtain the app and even use this app retailer,” Mackey says.
