Paper: Age-Based Access Restrictions considerations
slides-agews-paper-age-based-access-restrictions-considerations-00

Gianpaolo Angelo Scalone, Kevin Smith

As digital content becomes increasingly accessible, protecting minors from harmful or inappropriate material is a growing concern for regulators, platforms, and infrastructure providers. Age-based access restrictions are emerging as a key tool to address this challenge. Telecommunications providers (‘telcos’) offer unique capabilities for identity verification, persistent identifiers, and network-level enforcement. This paper explores the technical and architectural implications of implementing age-based restrictions, with a particular focus on telco infrastructure. It also considers alternative verification methods, blocking mechanisms, and the governance of content restriction lists.