Age verification is a privacy nightmare

CLAW BACK YOUR PRIVACY

Protect the Web for Everyone

An orange cat climbs an ALPR camera to swat at surveillance drones in a blue night sky.

Hi Digital Rights Supporter,

In the rush to block young people from certain parts of the internet, lawmakers are creating a privacy and security nightmare for everyone.

This scenario is already playing out globally. Help us stop it and keep the web open and accessible for all.

Join EFF

Even with the best intentions, every online age verification scheme has the same result: users are forced to reveal sensitive personal information to third parties simply to access the web. Once that valuable data is centralized, it becomes an immediate target for leaks, hacks, and misuse. This isn’t hypothetical: it has already happened several times.

By age gating the web, we serve up a honeypot of private info ripe for bad actors. But you can help us stop this when you join EFF.

A person wears an EFF Claw Back member t-shirt on the left. A person on the right wears a black sweatshirt with the Privacy Badger mascot on the chest.

Support digital rights in EFF's new Claw Back member t-shirt and Privacy Badger Crewneck.

Thanks to our members, EFF is on the front lines fighting against online age gating and identity verification online. We’re working with lawmakers to pass better policies, educating the public, and fighting the wildfire of age verification proposals around the world. Now all we need is you.