PRIVACY NIGHTMARE: Millions of Australians exposed, experts warn

The Albanese government’s controversial under-16 social media ban comes with ‘serious pitfalls’ that are being ignored.

Rebel News
  |   December 07, 2025   |   News   |   Be the first to comment

 

Communications Minister Anika Wells / ABC

Australia’s forthcoming under-16 social media ban has triggered a wave of concern from cybersecurity specialists, technology companies and politicians, who say the laws could compromise privacy and funnel users toward risky identification systems.

From 10 December 2025, social media platforms will be required to remove users identified as under 16 and delete their accounts or face fines of up to $50 million. The rules leave it to tech companies to work out how to verify users’ ages, resulting in a mix of facial analysis, government ID uploads, credit card checks and behavioural inference.

Hassan Asghar, a senior lecturer in cryptography and cybersecurity at Macquarie University, told Sky News Australia that linking real identity to online accounts came with serious pitfalls. “The mechanisms that are in place which require you to show to prove your age have some elements that can disclose your identity. That's a bit of a concern,” he said. “If you’re giving away information about yourself, that is inherently less secure than not giving any information. Australian minors will need to say farewell to the notion of anonymity… (and) live in a world where their social media life is directly linked to their real identities.”

Communications Minister Anika Wells has insisted government ID will not be mandatory. “You will not be forced to present government ID to verify your age,” she told the National Press Club, noting that platforms must offer a “reasonable alternative”. But tech companies say ID uploads may be unavoidable when age-estimation tools fail.

A Meta spokesperson said: “This is important, as we know age estimation technology is not 100 per cent accurate and is even more difficult at the 16 age boundary.” TikTok and Snapchat have adopted similar ID-verification pathways while promising secondary methods.

Jeff King, CEO of MyMahi, which participated in the government’s age assurance trial, said privacy-preserving student credentials were being overlooked. “The thing that sort of baffles us is the fact that they’ve now made no provision for some form of ID for 15 to 19-year-olds that’s privacy-preserving,” King said. He argued the current system is “counterintuitive and really completely opposite to what the (age assurance) trial was trying to trying to find out.”

Privacy expert Evin McMullen described blanket restrictions as “a very blunt tool” that risked misclassification and “a chilling effect that stretches far beyond the original safety goal”. She warned that requiring families to upload ID created “exactly the type of centralised honeypot that attackers target.”

Google has also cautioned that removing under-16s from accounts could make children less safe, with public policy manager Rachel Lord saying: “This law will not fulfill its promise to make kids safer online, and will, in fact, make Australian kids less safe on YouTube.”

Asghar noted that no country had yet deployed privacy-preserving age verification at scale. Wells, however, maintained she had “yet to have a single Australian parent” ask her to help their children evade the ban and said some adults had even asked: “Can you ban me as well?”

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