It is now clear that Snapchat age-verification process is not effective as earlier thought. This came evident when UK Lawmakers were grilling top Snap executives about the messaging app's age-verification process - Snapchat top executives admits its age-verification process are ineffective.
Two top Snap executives revealed this when they were being grilled by a UK Parliamentary committee. The executives were taken to task by the legislators after reports emerged about the app's age-verification process being ineffective.
The executives were called by UK lawmakers after the family of a British teenager who was murdered in 2014 claimed that they received taunting messages on the platform purportedly from the killer. The executives were taken to task by British Labor MP, Ian Lucas, who asked a number of questions regarding how the age-verification process works. The legislator went on to demonstrate how there was a flaw in the system. He tried to sign up to the app during the hearing and then put his year of birth at 2008. He was rejected as underage because the app assumed he was under the age of 13 years. He again tried signing up but then put his real age and this time he was actually successful at creating an account. He argued that any kid who is underage could easily bypass the age-verification process.
Lucas went on to ask "your age verification system doesn't work for a popular way of signing up to Snapchat. Do you agree?" Collins the Snapchat executive replied: "On the initial sign-up, certainly we agree." Collins went on to say that the case will be different if an underage user tried to create an account from a web browser. "They can easily be caught out by cookies.'' - Collins. But even in this case, an underage person could only be caught if he/she may have previously given out their real age on a different website.
The Snap executives failed to provide a clear breakdown of the number of users who sign-up to the platform via their app versus those who do so on the website. They, however, confirmed that the number of users who sign-up via the app are more and it remains difficult to set a cookie on the app. Mr. Scougal, who is another Snapchat executive also present during the parliamentary grilling, claimed that they actively look for what he termed as 'inference signals' to determine a user's age. He, however, did not explain what the 'inference signals' are all about.
