The UK’s draft Online Safety Bill has gone through a flurry of controversial changes throughout its legislative lifetime, with many new clauses just introduced facing much scrutiny.

Currently, the bill would require age verification for websites and services that show or allow pornographic content.

The amendments would affect user-to-user platforms as well as major adult entertainment sites that show pornographic content.

Age-checking technologies would be deployed to determine if a user was over 18 years of age through a number of means, potentially from a user’s selfie, official IDs, documents, or voice recognition technology.

The bill does have stipulations that users will be anonymised in the age verification process.

Privacy advocates, however, are concerned that the bill goes too far and will mean companies can collect citizen’s private data.

“The government’s desire to protect children is understandable but peers need to consider the privacy risks that come with forcing websites to verify the age of their users,” Dr Monica Horten, a policy manager for freedom of expression at Open Rights Group said in a statement.

“Some of these systems use facial recognition techniques to identify people’s age. The collection of large pools of children’s biometric data by private companies, with no governance structures in place, is something that all parents should be very worried about.”

The collection of children’s data is more closely regulated than the collection of adult data, and the Information Commissioner’s Office introduced the Children’s Code to enshrine more standards surrounding the legal collection of children’s data.

Currently, websites often have age verification methods which are easy for children to subvert and do not require specific documentation – another worry with the bill is that will unfairly target those from certain socioeconomic backgrounds that do not have ID documentation.

Another concern is that these laws may prevent children from accessing information on sexual health, gender, and sexuality if the definition of porn is not concretely defined in the bill.

“With these amendments, there is also a risk that children will be blocked out of websites as platform providers, worried about strict liability and criminal penalties will prefer to exclude them rather than risk expensive and untried age estimation systems for which they will pick up the tab,” Dr Horten said.

Wikipedia has already come out against the bill’s proposed age verification processes, saying they will not censor or block users from accessing certain pages, calling for an encyclopaedia exemption from the age restriction measures in the bill.

According to the BBC, tech minister Peter Scully said that sexual health information would not be effected, and Ofcom would have the ability to decide the rules of what is unavailable to those under 18.

The Online Safety Bill has faced much controversy since its introduction, from big tech, privacy activists, and child safety advocates alike.

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One of the main points of contention includes its new rules of encryption – under the bill, communications that would normally be encrypted would first be scanned on the client side for child abuse material, breaking the privacy inherent in end-to-end encryption.

Major tech companies and privacy advocates have said this unprecedented law would impede the privacy of citizens, and potentially jeopardise the safety of those relying on encrypted messages, such as journalists and activists.

Further, the bill could lead to the imprisonment of tech executives if they fail to keep children safe online via the rules in the bill.

As well, another clause recently introduced would make tech companies provide bereaved parents access to their deceased children’s data at the request of the coroner’s office for investigations into the cause of death.