UK age checks begin under Online Safety Act as Discord privacy issues raise alarms
Feb 22nd 2026
Platforms are rolling out age verification to comply with the law, but experiments with third-party vendors and reported data incidents have sparked fresh privacy and security concerns.
- The Online Safety Act requires firms to prevent children accessing defined categories of harmful content, prompting new age checks for UK users.
- Major platforms including Discord, Reddit and Xbox are using age gates and third-party vendors such as KWS, K-ID and Persona to verify ages.
- Discord announced plans for global facial scans and ID checks and tested Persona in the UK, sparking backlash after reports that up to 70,000 ID photos may have been exposed in a prior incident.
- Security researchers and journalists have found methods to bypass some face-scan systems, while platforms say they are developing countermeasures.
- Reports say some vendor setups temporarily store verification data and that a Persona frontend was found exposed on a server, raising further privacy concerns.
- Public polls show broad support for the law but scepticism about its effectiveness, and many non-UK services will likely need age assurance to keep serving British users.