UK Residents Now Creating Fake IDs to Circumvent Age Verification

The protest against the UKs Online Safety Act is only continuing to grow with some now creating fake IDs of MPs to circumvent age verification systems.

As more and more websites erect bad age gate systems for UK residents, UK residents are banding together to figure out how to defeat those systems. A huge number of them are turning to VPNs while others are using video game characters to defeat the censor walls.

Another method I figured would be a thing has long been stolen IDs to fool the facial recognition software being deployed. As it turns out, those services are popping up now. In one instance, the fake IDs being used are actually the MPs that are representing the residents. From Metro:

‘It will be funny when Keir Starmer’s driving licence is leaked online,’ said Tim Knight, the creator of Use-Their-ID, a website that generates IDs of any sitting MP in response to the Online Safety Act.

Type in a postcode, and in just seconds you can get something that looks uncomfortably real – a photo, a signature, a date of birth, a home address.

Like the prime minister’s ID, all of it is fake, of course – but people are trying to use it to bypass age verification checks online.

Use-Their-ID is part prank, part protest against the controversial law, which aims to stop children from seeing harmful content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography.

Since the Online Safety Act came into effect last Friday, more than 100,000 driving licences have been generated on Knight’s website.

The website can be found here and their FAQ specifically says that the IDs being used will also have “this is satire” written on it to deflect liability (whether that is sufficient is unclear). Here’s part of their FAQ:

What does this site do?
This gives you an AI-generated mock driving licence for your MP based on public data. This is useful given the recent Online Safety Act, which would otherwise require you to send your ID to a foreign identity checking service, or send your internet traffic to a foreign VPN.

Is this illegal?
I’ve scribbled ‘this is satire’ on the ID, so it can’t be used for anything real. This is a parody site. It uses publicly available data about your MP. The ID number isn’t valid and you can’t (and shouldn’t) use the ID for anything real.

Why have you done this?
The Online Safety Act is a terrible piece of legislation that makes the internet worse for everyone. It is a weakening of privacy and security online, and it is being used to censor content that the government doesn’t like.

It’s already being used to block people from accessing LGBTQ+ resources, sex education resources, substance addiction resources and anti-war information. e.g. Al Jazeera News subreddit is now blocked unless you provide your ID. Because the legislation is intentionally vague, it has a chilling effect on the global internet, and seems more like something that would be passed in Russia or China.

Sites hosting adult content are incentivised to run age verification checks as cheaply (i.e. insecurely) as possible. When the inevitable happens and the data is all leaked, I think it would be funny to see our MPs’ IDs in there.

This sort of thing was always a possibility. Using someone elses face would inherently bring about those who are using other people’s ID to circumvent the system. It’s unclear how successful these can be, but this is proof that there are those that are trying it.

The FAQ mentions that it makes everyone less secure. This, of course, is well founded given that there has been incident after incident after incident of ID verification systems suffering from leaks and data breaches. It’s only a matter of time before more incidences like this are brought to light.

What’s more, these verification systems have already been used to censor political speech and other kinds of material that children would actually benefit from (i.e. LGBTQ+ support groups and mental health resources).

Still, UK residents are clearly working hard to find ways of defeating the internet censors in the country. As long as there is motivation, the efforts to tear down the censor walls will always continue. So, it’ll be a neverending arms race just like the arms race of Digital Rights Management (DRM) which left the DRM manufacturers in a permanent state of defeat.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.