“Age verification systems are surveillance systems,” says the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Once information is shared to verify age, there’s no way for a website visitor to be certain that the data they’re handing over is not going to be retained and used by the website, or further shared or even sold.”

A 2022 report by France’s data regulator CNIL found that there was no solution on offer that simultaneously offered “sufficient reliability”, “complete coverage of the population”, and “respect... for privacy and security”.