Snapchat’s face scan mistakes Adelaide schoolboy Alastair Wurst, 14, as a 25-year-old
This 14-year-old jokingly put his year of birth as 2000 but the biggest laugh came when Snapchat’s face scan agreed – and verified him as 25 ahead of the under-16 social media ban.
Snapchat says this 14-year-old is 25.
Adelaide schoolboy Alastair Wurst this week passed the social media app’s age-verification process – involving a full-face scan from several angles – and was accepted as an adult born in 2000.
It means that 2011-born Alastair’s app will not be switched off on December 10, even though he is two years younger than the new legal age for social media of 16.
The schoolkid, who has just finished Year 8, jokingly entered his year of birth as 2000 when prompted to verify his age by Snapchat in the lead up to the federal government’s social media ban for children under 16.
“I had no idea it was going to work with the year 2000, I just put that in as kind of a joke,” said Alastair, who signed up to Snapchat about four months ago to communicate with his schoolmates.
“Then it got me to do a face scan, which was like setting up Face ID on your phone, moving your head to the side and stuff. I was just thinking ‘this is never going to work’ but then it said ‘age verified’. I was just really surprised. I thought it must have bugged out or something.”
Alastair said he received a prompt on the app earlier this week saying that he had been identified as potentially being under 16 and his account would be shut down if he did not verify his age before December 10, when the ban comes into effect.
He was asked to produce bank details, his driver’s licence or passport or submit to facial age estimation technology, which he selected.
After his outlandish entry of 2000 had been accepted as his year of birth, a surprised and amused Alastair went back into his app settings and tried to change the date again.
“But it just wouldn’t let me, it said ‘your age has already been verified’,” said Alastair, who had planned to switch to WhatsApp to communicate with friends after the ban came into place.
Alastair’s mum, respected Adelaide psychologist Emma Johnston, said she was “quite horrified” when she realised the app had verified that her young son was 25.
“I know that kids will find ways around this and I know it’s going to be very hard for parents to police, but when an app itself is mistaking a 14-year-old’s face to pass as 25, there is a real problem with what systems they’re using,” said Dr Johnston.
“I am very much in favour of the ban, both with my psychologist hat on and mother hat on. With my work, we see the damage to kids of social media, we see the bullying and the toxic messaging that kids get exposed to and we see the mental health disorders that arise as a result. But also as a mother, I really don’t like social media for kids under 16.”
Dr Johnston said she was surprised the app didn’t flag any concerns considering Alastair had kept his same birth day and month and only dramatically changed the year.
Alastair is not alone in bypassing the face-scanning technology. Other children on social media are also reporting being able to pass Snapchat’s test, although most are making themselves the legal age of 16 or 17, not jokingly trying to be 25.
The development throws the app’s age verification into doubt in the lead up to December 10.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the “onus is on the platforms, not parents or children, to meet these laws”.
“If a child has a social media account on December 10 then that platform is breaking the law,” she said.
“There are heavy penalties for companies who fail to take reasonable steps to prevent underage account holders onto their services of up to $49.5m per breach.
“Each platform is different and will use their own practices but the platforms have an obligation to explain their systems to their users.”
In her opening statement to Senate Estimates earlier this week, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said her office had “engaged consistently with platforms about our expectations –and believe that every platform captured through this scheme has the technical ability to comply”.
A spokeswoman for Snapchat said: “The Australian Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) law requires platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent users under 16 years old from having accounts, not to verify users’ exact ages.
“The goal is to ensure that users are over the minimum age limit, not to collect precise age data for that or other purposes. Snapchat takes its compliance seriously and will continue to work within the framework set by the legislation.”
A spokesman for k-ID, the company responsible for Snapchat’s face-scanning technology, said it had “no way of evaluating the claim made based on the information provided due to the privacy preserving nature of our technology”.
“The Facial Age Estimation technology has been assessed as TRL9 by the Government’s AATT and is Certified as Highly Effective by the Age Check Certification Scheme,” he said.
