“A significant cost to incur in a liberal democracy": Why listeners now have to upload biometric data to access certain Spotify songs

The Online Safety Act has now become law in the UK and it is having consequences that go beyond its purpose of shielding children from pornography and harmful content. For one it is having an impact on Spotify users.

The Act came into effect last Friday (July 25). It now means social media companies and search services now have 'legal duties to protect their users from illegal content and content harmful to children.'

Users must now prove their age to access websites that host ‘adult’ content. Users can usually do this by uploading pictures of Government-issued ID such as passports or driving licences or take a video selfie, which the system will then use to ‘estimate’ your age.

Unfortunately, a whole swathe of fairly benign content has now fallen foul of the act.

Music with lyrics that might just contain the odd swearword for one, which is why Spotify users are now having to prove their age and are having to verify their ID to access certain songs.

But would you trust any tech giant with your private information and photo?

Not if you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal of the mid-2010s when the UK-based consulting firm harvested data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. It was data which was then used to fuel the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential bid.

Civil liberties groups aren’t happy.

"I don't doubt the intentions of those who are supporting this act,” said Matthew Feeney, Advocacy Manager at Big Brother Watch. "The fact is that it's unclear that this will actually make children safer because they can just drive themselves to parts of the dark web to access this content anyway.

"In addition, adults are going to find themselves in a position of having to upload biometric data or identification in order to access completely legal speech. I think that's a significant cost to incur in a liberal democracy."

And as is the way with anything on the Internet, there are always ways round it.

Since Friday there has been a spike in VPNs or virtual private networks being downloaded to bypass the new rules - indeed according to Digi.watch, half the Top 10 apps on Apple’s app store are VPNs.

These, however, come with their own risks. You could be importing malware or, ironically, you could have your data scalped nefariously.