Snapchat admits age verification failures to MPs

 

[text_block id=”05ab206fbed878c9e2f9bfc8100ee785″ content=”‹¨›p‹˜›Via Skynews.‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›strong‹˜›Executives at Snapchat have been grilled by MPs over the company‹³›s system to verify the age of its users and ensure they‹³›re over 13.‹¨›/strong‹˜›‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›One MP told the company that he had been able to sign up for the app after telling it he was just 12 years old; when the system told him he must be older, he was simply able to change the age he gave.‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›During a hearing before a parliamentary committee, the company‹³›s representatives accepted its age verification systems when users signed up for the platform weren‹³›t robust enough.‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›Its senior director for public policy, Stephen Collins, and its director of creative strategy, Will Scougal, said that Snapchat did not want underage users on its platform.‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›They stressed that there was no commercial advantage to having children under the age of 13 on the app.‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›They said they do have methods to check if users are underage at sign-up, mainly by tracking cookies in web browsers, but that these don‹³›t work when people sign up for the app instead of creating their account using the web.‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›Mr Collins added that Snapchat did analyse its users‹³› behaviour to identify whether underage users had got past its rules, but admitted there wasn‹³›t a ‹²›foolproof way‹²› to prevent this from happening.‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›a href‹´›‹²›https://news.sky.com/story/snapchat-admits-age-verification-failures-to-mps-11670399‹²› target‹´›‹²›_blank‹²› rel‹´›‹²›noopener‹²›‹˜›Read the full article‹¯›gt;‹¯›gt;‹¨›/a‹˜›‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/p‹˜›‹¨›p‹˜›#Snapchat, #age, #verification, #failures, #MPs, #UK, #GDPR, #Children‹¨›/p‹˜›” paragraph_whitespace=”true” text_size=”” line_height=”” text_color=”” margin=”0px 0px 15px 0px” class=”” _fw_coder=”aggressive” __fw_editor_shortcodes_id=”7d389890ac2b4cf227d6fa538db657f8″][/text_block]