WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has denied approval to three age verification companies that were seeking to implement a biometric solution to meet Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requirements.
The four FTC commissioners voted unanimously to reject the application jointly submitted last June by Yoti, the Entertainment Software Rating Board and SuperAwesome.
The companies’ “Privacy-Protective Facial Age Estimation” system would “analyze the geometry of a user’s face to confirm the person is an adult and can access certain content,” tech law news site NextGov reported.
“The FTC confirmed that 354 comments raised concerns with the software’s data collection and storage capabilities, particularly in regards to generating deepfake content, along with other privacy violations.”
Yoti also submitted the same biometric model to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); that evaluation and report are forthcoming.
The FTC left open the possibility of revisiting the technology and the rejected application, stating that it expects that the NIST report “will materially assist the Commission, and the public, in better understanding age verification technologies.”
Evan Greer, of digital rights group Fight for the Future, called the rejection of the AV companies’ application “another great move from the FTC.”
“A world where you get your face scanned to access a website is not a safer world,” Greer posted on X.com. “There is no ‘privacy protective’ way to scan people’s faces in order to estimate their age.”
A Yoti rep told XBIZ the company is disappointed that the FTC declined to either issue a substantive decision or delay further ruling on the application.
"The ESRB, Yoti, and Kids Web Services filed the application in June 2023, and the commission twice extended its decision on the application beyond the 120-day period set forth in the COPPA rule," the rep explained. "The commission’s letter indicates that it believes it would be helpful to be able to review, as part of its decision-making process, a report about facial age estimation models that is anticipated to be released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in April. Unfortunately, instead of accommodating our request to stay its decision for another 90 days to give the commission sufficient time for consideration of the NIST report, the FTC declined the application without prejudice."
In light of the FTC’s recent statements welcoming innovation in verifiable parental consent (VPC) methods, the rep added, Yoti "remains hopeful that facial age estimation and other innovative technologies will be considered COPPA-compliant when used to obtain verifiable parental consent in the near future."
