Xbox has started to automatically process UK Online Safety Act age checks based on “longstanding account activity”, avoiding intrusive government ID uploads, face scans, credit card checks and other means to determine a user’s age.
Those who are verified with this new system will have a message from Xbox which reads:
Only took them a whole year of people pointing out the bleeding obvious that an old Xbox account means an old person…
This is a similar approach to Apple, who will also automatically verify age based on Apple Account age and other metrics. Given how broad Microsoft is as a company, they could be leaning on the age of the Microsoft account itself. Maybe it’s setting up a Hotmail account in the early 2000s, or playing Gears of War or Halo 2 on PC back in the day, which required setting up an Xbox profile for Games for Windows Live. Remember that? My first “Xbox” achievements came from that in 2007.
It’s not clear if there’s wiggle room and further common sense that a newborn baby is not going to have set up an Xbox account and immediately started playing Gears, but it’s a good move nonetheless.
While the UK OSA and similar legislation is still taking a sledgehammer to the problem of keeping children away from harmful content, spaces and people on the internet, it’s the law that we in the UK have to live with. We hope that others follow suit, as Sony currently leans on the same third party as Microsoft did – Yoti – and has a much stricter clamp down on communications than Xbox does, while Steam’s only option for age verification is to have a credit card attached to your account, which is far from guaranteed.
Source: my Xbox account being old enough to drink
