banks oppose age checks by bank card, considered ineffective and risky

How to effectively control the age of viewers on pornographic sites? Not with bank cards, respond the financial establishments united within the French Banking Federation. This solution proposed by Arcom would be ineffective or even dangerous, she told AFP on Friday, confirming information from l'Informed.

To prevent minors from accessing pornographic sites, the internet policeman, Arcom, seeks to impose control methods: it temporarily proposes, – while another technical solution is available -, that the sites impose to enter their credit card details when accessing the content. The user would not be charged, but would thus prove to have a bank card, and supposedly to be old enough to access pornographic sites.

A method that the French Banking Federation (FBF), the professional organization of French banks, disapproves of. First, because this solution would not be effective in discriminating against minors, she estimates: 1.4 million of them have a bank card, and could therefore bypass this control. Above all, this “use of bank cards presents risks of bank card phishing on sites which, for more than thirty years, have not complied with the law for the protection of minors”recalls the FBF. In other words: sites that already do not comply with the law may be unreliable in their collection of bank card data. In particular, certain unscrupulous sites could take advantage of these controls to hijack bank cards and carry out transactions without the knowledge of their owner.

The Payment Means Security Observatory, led by the Banque de France, recommended in September that it be “extremely selective and vigilant” before registering your card number online. In its framework adopted in October, for which the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties (CNIL) issued a favorable opinion, Arcom proposes to pornographic sites, for a transitional period of three months from January, to implement places this bank card verification system “in order to protect the youngest users without delay.”