• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 1, 2025

Australians logged into their search engine accounts on Google and Microsoft will have their age checked by the end of 2025 based on an online safety regulation, which the eSafety Commissioner developed with technology companies. 

The security measures will affect advertising and media buying. When search engine age assurance technology believes a signed-in user is likely to be an Australian under the age of 18, they will need to set safety tools such as “safe search” functions at the highest setting by default to filter out pornography and violence.

Search engines operating in Australia will need to implement technologies that check the user's age when they are logged in within six months. The rules were published Monday.

This Online Safety Code encompasses three parts and applies to providers of internet search engine services, not social platforms. Social platforms will appear under another code. It also does not apply to the provision of search tools to end-users of online services such as app distribution services, relevant electronic services, or designated internet services, according to the 14-page rules document. 

The codes had been in the works since July 2024 and failure to comply with them could result in civil penalties of up to $49.5 million per breach, according to the eSafety Commissioner's office. The code is to prevent harmful content on search engines, enterprise hosting services, and internet carriage services such as telecommunication firms.

"Very few of these platforms and technologies were created with children in mind, or with safety as a primary goal. Today, safety by design is not the norm, it is the exception," eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said during a meeting at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. 

Grant referred to these measures as "age insurance protections," which companies have agreed to implement "up and down the technology stack." It will work in "lockstep" with new social media age limits."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a blog post in December 2024 calling age verification systems "surveillance systems" that threaten "everyone’s privacy and anonymity.

But Australia’s government recently decided to ignore these dangers, passing a vague, sweeping piece of age verification legislation after giving only a day for comments."

The post referred to the "Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, which bans children under the age of 16 from using social media, will force platforms to take undefined “reasonable steps” to verify users’ ages and prevent young people from using them, or face over $30 million in fines." 

Canada also is considering age assurance legislation. The bill would require porn sites to implement age assurance technology secured by third-party age assurance providers to provide age estimation or verification methods that protect privacy and personal information.

Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne is leading this effort in Canada. The legislation -- Bill S-210 –Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act -- passed the Senate in April 2023 with support from every party except the ruling Liberals under Justin Trudeau, but failed to pass before an election in April 2025 reset the government with Mark Carney as the new Prime Minister, according to one report.