gamescom Session Weighs Age Assurance That Fails and In-Game Grooming
The session frames child safety as a matter of ongoing behavior detection and human review, not a one-time gate, because children routinely bypass age verification by using borrowed accounts.
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
At gamescom dev, a session on grooming and extremism on gaming platforms argued that age verification at registration is not enough. Speakers Carolyn Fox of TELUS Digital and Hege Tokerud of Aiba described how children borrow accounts or IDs to slip through, and how gradual manipulation, from small requests to rule-breaking, can lead to grooming or recruitment to crime. They called for continuous behavior monitoring.
At gamescom dev, the session "What Happens When Age Assurance Fails" did not treat age verification as a single locked door. Carolyn Fox, who leads Trust & Safety at TELUS Digital, and Hege Tokerud, co-founder of the Norwegian AI company Aiba, described the gap between a verified account and the person actually using it.
Children borrow identification or accounts from parents and older siblings, sometimes without the owner's knowledge. The age confirmed at entry is not necessarily the age of the user. Both speakers argued that platforms must watch behavior before and after registration, spotting the gradual manipulation that leads to grooming or recruitment to fraud. The session also noted a rise in new VPN registrations from the UK after regulations took effect, though the purpose of that use is not clear.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.