Technologies

Welcome to the Era of Online Age Verification. Are You Ready to Identify Yourself?

The introduction of the UK’s Online Safety Act marks a shift in internet culture, the ripples of which are already being felt around the world.

Last Thursday morning I woke up to find I no longer had access to my messages on social network Bluesky. «You must complete age assurance in order to access this screen,» a pop-up notification told me.

It went on to say the local laws where I live mean that I need to verify I’m an adult to view mature content or send direct messages. I’m based in the UK, and the law Bluesky was referring to is the Online Safety Act, which came into force on Friday.

This piece of legislation requires web companies to ensure that people under the age of 18 don’t have access to harmful content, including porn and material relating to self-harm, suicide and eating disorders. If sites choose to allow this content, they must verify the ages of people using their platforms to confirm that they’re adults. Failure to do so could result in fines of £18 million or 10% of annual revenue, whichever is greater.

«Prioritising clicks and engagement over children’s online safety will no longer be tolerated in the UK,» Melanie Dawes, chief executive of regulator Ofcom, said in a statement. «Our message to tech firms is clear — comply with age-checks and other protection measures set out in our Codes, or face the consequences.»

Over the past few days, free VPNs shot to the top of the UK App Store charts as people have looked for ways to bypass the requirement to verify their ages. It should be noted that using free VPNs comes with it own set of risks, and isn’t recommended by online security experts.

The Online Safety Act might be a UK-specific law, but it affects companies based in the US and around the world, including Bluesky, Reddit, Discord, X, Porn Hub and Grindr — all of which have committed to «age-gating» features to protect young people from stumbling across harmful content.

It’s also emblematic of a bigger shift in internet culture, which is seeing age verification become a mainstream concern across the world. Increasingly, adults who want to keep accessing internet services, from mainstream social networks to porn sites, will have to prove their age. In other words, expect my Bluesky experience to be coming to the internet near you soon.

Earlier this month, the European Commission published an age verification app prototype that will help keep young people safe online in accordance with the EU’s Digital Services Act. We’re also starting to see the ripple effect in the US of the legislation the UK and EU have enacted, says Vaishnavi J, founder of online child safety consultancy Vys. Just last month, the US Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring porn sites to verify the age of all visitors.

«State laws, advocacy campaigns, and growing parental demand in the US are all converging around the need for age assurance,» said J, who previously worked in the policy teams at Meta and Twitter. «Combine that with rapid advances in the tech ecosystem, and it’s no longer a question of if the US adopts age verification, but how and when.»

Safety vs. privacy

The Wild West nature of the internet and the ability to be largely anonymous often blurs the lines between spaces occupied by children and adults in a way that doesn’t happen in the offline world. This means children are often exposed to content many would consider inappropriate or harmful. According to Ofcom’s own research, around 1 in 10 children in the UK between the ages of 8 and 14 have watched online pornography — an activity the new age verification rules are designed to prevent.

Making the internet safer for children might be necessary and admirable, but age verification policies have also come under fire from digital rights and privacy groups.

I’ve been covering the UK’s attempts to bring in age verification since 2016. The government at the time decided it was too difficult and ultimately decided not to push ahead with plans aimed at age-gating porn sites in 2019.

The main objection to the legislation was the same then as it is now. Asking people to share their government-issued identification with private companies poses a threat to their privacy.

«The British public is being forced to hand over sensitive personal data to unregulated age assurance providers if they want to have full access to platforms such as Reddit and Bluesky or to use dating apps such as Grindr,» said James Baker, head of programming at Open Rights Group, in a statement ahead of the Online Safety Act coming into force.

«The threats and harms of phishing and hacking are very real, and will cause people online harms,» he added.

Open Rights Group also criticized the fact that people aren’t being given the right to choose how they verify their age. A number of verification methods exist, including age estimation via video selfie (a method gaming platform Roblox announced it was introducing last week), banking or credit card checks, third-party digital ID services, mobile carrier checks or photo ID matching. It’s up to the individual service which method they want to adopt, which could leave people vulnerable to problematic privacy policies.

As with many internet rules, there’s always some level of tradeoff involved when making the online world safe. In many ways, the idea of age verification is «common sense,» Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, tech policy adviser at NYU’s Stern Business School, wrote in a blog post this week. At the same time, she added, depending on regulations and methods chosen, age verification can introduce serious privacy, security and access risks.

«In some cases, the systems employed are so flawed that they fail to protect minors while also excluding adults who should have lawful access,» said Rosenblat. «Policymakers must understand and carefully weigh these tradeoffs before mandating age verification at scale.»

Many critics of age verification have also argued that verification will be ineffective due to the wide availability of VPNs and teens’ ability to circumvent any rules attempting to limit their internet use.

Whether age verification is truly effective at keeping kids safe online is a question that can only be answered as the Online Safety Act and similar legislation comes into force. In the meantime, I — and possibly you — will need to be prepared to prove our identities and our ages if we’re to continue using the internet in the way we’ve become accustomed to using it.

Technologies

An AWS Outage Broke the Internet While You Were Sleeping, and the Trouble Continues

Reddit, Roblox and Ring are just a tiny fraction of the 1,000-plus sites and services that were affected when Amazon Web Services went down, causing a major internet blackout.

The internet kicked off the week the way that many of us often feel like doing: by refusing to go to work. An outage at Amazon Web Services rendered huge portions of the internet unavailable on Monday morning. Sites and services including Snapchat, Fortnite, Venmo, the PlayStation Network and, predictably, Amazon, were unavailable off and on through the start of the day.

The outage began shortly after midnight PT, and took Amazon around 3.5 hours to fully resolve. Social networks and streaming services were among the 1,000-plus companies affected, and critical services such as online banking were also taken down.

The issues seemed to have been largely resolved as the US East Coast was coming online, but spiked again dramatically after 8 a.m. PT as work began on the West Coast.

AWS, a cloud services provider owned by Amazon, props up huge portions of the internet. So when it went down, it took many of the services we know and love with it. As with the Fastly and Crowdstrike outages over the past few years, the AWS outage shows just how much of the internet relies on the same infrastructure — and how quickly our access to the sites and services we rely on can be revoked when something goes wrong.

The reliance on a small number of big companies to underpin the web is akin to putting all of our eggs in a tiny handful of baskets. When it works, it’s great, but only one small thing needs to go wrong for the internet to come to its knees in a matter of minutes.

How widespread was the AWS outage?

Just after midnight PT on Oct. 20, AWS first registered an issue on its service status page, saying it was «investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-East-1 Region.» Around 2 a.m. PT, it said it had identified a potential root cause of the issue. Within half an hour, it had started applying mitigations that were resulting in significant signs of recovery.

«The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now,» AWS said at 3.35 a.m. PT. The company didn’t respond to request for further comment beyond pointing us back to the AWS health dashboard.

But as of 8:43 a.m. PT, many services were still impacted, and the AWS status page showed the severity as «degraded.» In a post at that time, AWS noted: «We are throttling requests for new EC2 instance launches to aid recovery and actively working on mitigations.»

Around the time that AWS says it first began noticing error rates, Downdetector saw reports begin to spike across many online services, including banks, airlines and phone carriers. As AWS resolved the issue, some of these reports saw a drop off, whereas others have yet to return to normal. (Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

Around 4 a.m. PT, Reddit was still down, while services including Ring, Verizon and YouTube were still seeing a significant number of reported issues. Reddit finally came back online around 4.30 a.m. PT, according to its status page, which was then verified by us.

In total, Downdetector saw over 6.5 million reports, with 1.4 million coming from the US, 800,000 from the UK and the rest largely spread across Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany and France. Over 1,000 companies in total have been affected, Downdetector added.

«This kind of outage, where a foundational internet service brings down a large swath of online services, only happens a handful of times in a year,» Daniel Ramirez, Downdetector by Ookla’s director of product told CNET. «They probably are becoming slightly more frequent as companies are encouraged to completely rely on cloud services and their data architectures are designed to make the most out of a particular cloud platform.»

What caused the AWS outage?

AWS didn’t immediately share full details about what caused the internet to fall off a cliff this morning. Then at 8:43 a.m. PT, it offered this brief description: «The root cause is an underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers.»

Earlier in the day it had attributed the outage to a «DNS issue.» DNS stands for the Domain Name System and refers to the service that translates human-readable internet addresses (for example, CNET.com) into machine-readable IP addresses that connect browsers with websites.

When a DNS error occurs, the translation process cannot take place, interrupting the connection. DNS errors are common internet roadblocks, but usually happen on small scale, affecting individual sites or services. But because the use of AWS is so widespread, a DNS error can have equally widespread results.

According to Amazon, the issue is geographically rooted in its US-East-1 region, which refers to an area of North Virginia where many of its data centers are based. It’s a significant location for Amazon, as well as many other internet companies, and it props up services spanning the US and Europe.

«The lesson here is resilience,» said Luke Kehoe, industry analyst at Ookla. «Many organizations still concentrate critical workloads in a single cloud region. Distributing critical apps and data across multiple regions and availability zones can materially reduce the blast radius of future incidents.»

Was the AWS outage caused by a cyberattack?

DNS issues can be caused by malicious actors, but there’s no evidence at this stage to say that this is the case for the AWS outage.

Technical faults can, however, pave the way for hackers to look for and exploit vulnerabilities when companies’ backs are turned and defenses are down, according to Marijus Briedis, CTO at NordVPN. «This is a cybersecurity issue as much as a technical one,» he said in a statement. «True online security isn’t only about keeping hackers out, it’s also about ensuring you can stay connected and protected when systems fail.»

In the hours ahead, people should look out for scammers hoping to take advantage of people’s awareness of the outage, added Briedis. You should be extra wary of phishing attacks and emails telling you to change your password to protect your account.

Technologies

Apple Watch Series 11 Deals: How to Save Up to $335 on Apple’s Latest Wearable

Technologies

Take Your Apple Watch Experience to the Next Level With These 8 Tips and Tricks

Get the most out of your Apple Watch with these expert-approved tips.

Apple’s smartwatch lineup is getting better year after year. This year is no exception with the new Apple Watch series 11, Apple Watch SE 3 and the Apple Watch Ultra 3. Whether you’ve got a brand new model to get acquainted with or you’re trying out the new features in WatchOS 26, there are options to keep you productive, become more active and take control of your life. These are the features I love the most.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Swipe between watch faces (again)

Until WatchOS 10.0, you could swipe from the left or right edge of the screen to switch active watch faces, a great way to quickly go from an elegant workday face to an exercise-focused one, for example. Apple removed that feature, likely because people were accidentally switching faces by brushing the edges of the screen.

However, the regular method involves more steps (touch and hold the face, swipe to change, tap to confirm), and people realized that the occasional surprise watch face change wasn’t really so bad. Therefore, as of version 10.2, including the current WatchOS 26, you can turn the feature on by toggling a setting: Go to Settings > Clock and turn on Swipe to Switch Watch Face.

Stay on top of your heart health with Vitals

Wearing your Apple Watch while sleeping offers a trove of information — and not just about how you slept last night. If you don the timepiece overnight, it tracks a number of health metrics. The Vitals app gathers that data and reports on the previous night’s heart rate, respiration, body temperature (on supported models) and sleep duration. The Vitals app can also show data collected during the previous seven days — tap the small calendar icon in the top-left corner.

If you own a watch model sold before Jan. 29, 2024, you’ll also see a blood oxygen reading. On newer watches in the US, that feature works differently because of an intellectual property fight: The watch’s sensors take a reading, and then send the data to the Health app on your iPhone. You can check it there, but it doesn’t show up in the Vitals app.

How is this helpful? The software builds a baseline of what’s normal for you. When the values stray outside normal ranges, such as irregular heart or respiratory rates, the Vitals app reports them as atypical to alert you. It’s not a medical diagnosis, but it can prompt you to get checked out and catch any troubles early.

Make the Wrist Flick gesture second nature

WatchOS 26 adds a new gesture that has quickly become a favorite. On the Apple Watch Series 9 and later, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Ultra 3, Wrist Flick is a quick motion to dismiss incoming calls, notifications or really anything that pops up on the screen. Wrist Flick joins Double Tap as a way to interact with a watch even if you’re not in a position to tap the screen.

But what I like most about the gesture is that it’s also a shortcut for jumping back to the watch face. For example, when a Live Activity is automatically showing up in the Smart Stack, a quick flick of the wrist hides the stack. Or let’s say you’re configuring a feature in the Settings app that’s buried a few levels deep. You don’t need to repeatedly tap the back (<) button — just flick your wrist.

Make the Smart Stack work for you

The Smart Stack is a place to access quick information that might not fit into what Apple calls a «complication» (the things on the watch face other than the time itself, such as your Activity rings or the current outside temperature). When viewing the clock face, turn the digital crown clockwise or swipe from the bottom of the screen to view a series of tiles that show information such as the weather or suggested photo memories. This turns out to be a great spot for accessing features when you’re using a minimal watch face that has no complications.

Choose which Live Activities appear automatically

The Smart Stack is also where Live Activities appear: If you order a food delivery, for example, the status of the order appears as a tile in the Smart Stack (and on the iPhone lock screen). And because it’s a timely activity, the Smart Stack becomes the main view instead of the watch face.

Some people find that too intrusive. To disable it, on your watch open the Settings app, go to Smart Stack > Live Activities and turn off the Auto-Launch Live Activities option. You can also turn off Allow Live Activities in the same screen if you don’t want them disrupting your watch experience.

Apple’s apps that use Live Activities are listed there if you want to configure the setting per app, such as making active timers appear but not media apps such as Music. For third-party apps, open the Watch app on your iPhone, tap Smart Stack and find the settings there.

Add and pin favorite widgets in the Smart Stack

When the Smart Stack first appeared, its usefulness seemed hit or miss. Since then, Apple seems to have improved the algorithms that determine which widgets appear — instead of it being an annoyance, I find it does a good job of showing me information in context. But you can also pin widgets that will show up every time you open the stack.

For example, I use 10-minute timers for a range of things. Instead of opening the Timers app (via the App list or a complication), I added a single 10-minute timer to the Smart Stack. Here’s how:

View the Smart Stack by turning the Digital Crown or swiping from the bottom of the screen.
Tap the Edit button at the bottom of the stack. (In WatchOS 11, touch and hold the screen to enter the edit mode.)
Tap the + button and scroll to the app you want to include (Timers, in this example).
Tap a tile to add it to the stack; for Timers, there’s a Set Timer 10 minutes option.
If you want it to appear higher or lower in the stack order, drag it up or down.
Tap the checkmark button to accept the change.

The widget appears in the stack but it may get pushed down in favor of other widgets the watch thinks should have priority. In that case, you can pin it to the top of the list: While editing, tap the yellow Pin button. That moves it up but Live Activities can still take precedence.

Use the watch as a flashlight

You’ve probably used the flashlight feature of your phone dozens of times but did you know the Apple Watch can also be a flashlight? Instead of a dedicated LED (which phones also use as a camera flash), the watch’s full screen becomes the light emitter. It’s not as bright as the iPhone’s, nor can you adjust the beam width, but it’s perfectly adequate for moving around in the dark when you don’t want to disturb someone sleeping.

To activate the flashlight, press the side button to view Control Center and then tap the Flashlight button. That makes the entire screen white — turn the Digital Crown to adjust the brightness. It even starts dimmed for a couple of seconds to give you a chance to direct the light away so it doesn’t fry your eyes.

The flashlight also has two other modes: Swipe left to make the white screen flash on a regular cadence or swipe again to make the screen bright red. The flashing version can be especially helpful when you’re walking or running at night to make yourself more visible to vehicles.

Press the Digital Crown to turn off the Flashlight and return to the clock face.

Pause your Exercise rings if you’re traveling or ill

Closing your exercise, movement and standing rings can be great motivation for being more active. Sometimes, though, your body has other plans. Until WatchOS 11, if you became ill or needed to be on a long-haul trip, any streak of closing those rings that you built up would be dashed.

Now, the watch is more forgiving (and practical), letting you pause your rings without disrupting the streak. Open the Activity app and tap the Weekly Summary button in the top-left corner. Scroll all the way to the bottom (take a moment to admire your progress) and tap the Pause Rings button. Or, if you don’t need that extra validation, tap the middle of the rings and then tap Pause Rings. You can choose to pause them for today, until next week or month, or set a custom number of days.

When you’re ready to get back into your activities, go to the same location and tap Resume Rings.

Bypass the countdown to start a workout

Many workouts start with a three-second countdown to prep you to be ready to go. That’s fine and all, but usually when I’m doing an Outdoor Walk workout, for example, my feet are already on the move.

Instead of losing those steps, tap the countdown once to bypass it and get right to the calorie burn.

How to force-quit an app (and why you’d want to)

Don’t forget, the Apple Watch is a small computer on your wrist and every computer will have glitches. Every once in a while, for instance, an app may freeze or behave erratically.

On a Mac or iPhone, it’s easy to force a recalcitrant app to quit and restart, but it’s not as apparent on the Apple Watch. Here’s how:

Double-press the Digital Crown to bring up the list of recent apps.
Scroll to the one you want to quit by turning the crown or dragging with your finger.
Swipe left on the app until you see a large red X button.
Tap the X button to force-quit the app.

Keep in mind this is only for times when an app has actually crashed — as on the iPhone, there’s no benefit to manually quitting apps.

These are some of my favorite Apple Watch tips, but there’s a lot more to the popular smartwatch. Be sure to also check out why the Apple Watch SE 3 could be the sleeper hit of this year’s lineup, and Vanessa Hand Orellana’s visit to the labs where Apple tests how the watches communicate.