UK Tech Users Face Tougher Age Checks Under New Government Plans

Key Takeaways

• Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy confirmed legislation is coming after Apple and Google were given three months in June to block nude images on under-18s' devices, and their "significant commitments" still "do not meet the scale of this crisis."
• The law would force device-level blocks at the operating system layer and require apps used by children to introduce the same protections, with Prime Minister Andy Burnham calling it the world's strongest child safety laws and the first time protection is "built into the device and switched on by default."
• The government insists adults are not the target, but the Open Rights Group warned that any workable solution would still force "every adult" through "a digital ID checkpoint," with private images potentially scanned by default.
• Big Brother Watch called the plan a "crossing of the Rubicon" that would make the UK "one of the most authoritarian internet regimes in the world," and the government has not detailed how it will scan encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

Britain Already Ran the Pilot Program on Itself

Apple has been quietly running this exact experiment on UK users since March, when iOS 26.4 rolled out mandatory age checks nationwide, and Ofcom called it "a real win for children and families" at the time.

In June, ministers gave Apple and Google three months to build similar nudity blocks directly into every device and app used by children, framing it as a chance for the industry to solve this itself. Both companies made "meaningful changes," according to Nandy. Apple pointed to a Communication Safety feature it launched back in 2021, and Google called itself an "industry leader in combating non-consensual intimate imagery."

None of that was enough. Nandy told MPs on Tuesday that despite those commitments, the current proposals "do not meet the scale of this crisis," and that ministers would legislate "as soon as they can." What the UK watched happen voluntarily to one company's users in March is about to become compulsory for every operating system and every app in the country.

Who This Is Actually For, According to Everyone Except the People Writing It

The child safety case here is not manufactured. Sextortion reports tracked by the Internet Watch Foundation rose from 19 in 2022 to nearly 400 in 2025, and the NSPCC's Chris Sherwood called the legislation a "necessary move" after tech firms missed their own deadline. Andy Burrows of the Molly Rose Foundation went further, describing the road here as "needlessly long and torturous."

And, well, this is where the plan runs into its own contradiction. The government insists adults won't lose access to legal nude imagery on their own devices, but nobody has explained how a system tells an adult apart from a child without first checking everyone. The Open Rights Group put it plainly, warning that "every adult would be forced through a digital ID checkpoint, and private images could be scanned by default." The government's response so far has been to deny that this amounts to surveillance, which is not the same thing as explaining how it avoids being one.

The Encryption Problem Nobody's Explaining

Nandy told MPs the government was aware of "particular challenges" around end-to-end encryption but offered no detail on the "potential solutions" it was exploring. That's not a small gap, given that WhatsApp and Signal are exactly the apps this legislation needs to reach if it's serious about stopping private image sharing.

There is only one way to inspect content inside an encrypted conversation before it's encrypted, and that's client-side scanning, running software on the device that checks images before they're sent. A scanner built to catch nude images can also be pointed at anything else a future government decides is worth flagging, and the UK's record enforcing broad, vague rules doesn't inspire confidence the scope stays narrow.

ISPreview raised a more basic problem too, since device setup can happen offline and plenty of people don't have ID or a spare card handy when unboxing a replacement phone. A child can also still borrow an unrestricted device, so the workaround problem never actually goes away.

A Rubicon, and a Government Moving in Two Directions at Once

Big Brother Watch's response was the sharpest so far, calling the plan "a crossing of the Rubicon" that would make the UK "one of the most authoritarian internet regimes in the world." That's hard to dismiss as hyperbole when the mechanism under discussion is a mandatory ID check built into the operating system of every phone sold in the country, regardless of what you're actually trying to do with it.

What makes this stranger still is that the same government is simultaneously trying to ban VPN access for minors, the one tool that would let a teenager, or an adult reluctant to scan a passport to unlock their own phone, route around exactly this kind of device-level check. You can't credibly claim to be closing a loophole while legislating to keep the escape route open for anyone determined enough to look for it.

If this is genuinely about stopping nude images from reaching children, the government still hasn't explained why the fix requires every adult in the country to prove their age to open a camera app. Burnham can call this the strongest child safety law in the world, but strength isn't precision, and right now this looks a lot more like the former.