House Approves Online Age Verification Bill

The West Virginia House of Delegates wants to protect children from accessing explicit material online. But that raises data privacy concerns.

House Bill 4412 would require certain websites to verify that an individual is 18 years of age or older to prevent minors from accessing harmful content.

Del. Sean Fluharty, D-Ohio, expressed concern about how companies would handle users’ personal data when verifying age.

“This information can include things like social security numbers, correct?” he asked the bill’s lead sponsor, Del. Gino Chiarelli, R-Monongalia. “It could include things like, from what’s in here, their mother’s maiden name. Why is that necessary?”

Chiarelli said companies are free to determine how they verify users’ age, and 25 other states have already passed similar laws with little to no issue.

“The companies that are doing the verification, whether it’s themselves or through a third party, they can only retain the data so long as they are able to perform the age verification,” Chiarelli said. “That data is not to be retained, and there are penalties for improper data retention in the bill.”

Critics of age verification requirements like The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties nonprofit, have raised concerns that such laws threaten everyone’s privacy and free-speech rights and disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

“This is some big government stuff here. I’m hoping the Senate can clean up this bill as it moves over,” Fluharty said. “I think it has good intent behind it, but we have to be careful with this personally identifiable information being maintained or stored by an agency that we really don’t know. I think that’s a concern for West Virginians, and how that would proceed forward if there’s a data breach of some sort. Who’s on the hook?”

Fluharty ultimately voiced his support for the bill, and it passed with unanimous consent from the 94 delegates present.