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

Kremlin Confirms Putin Transmitted Iran’s War Resolution Plan to Trump

The Kremlin says Putin relayed Iran’s proposal for ending the war to Trump, while Trump announced a Russian diesel supply deal that drew sharp criticism from Zelenskyy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin communicated Tehran’s perspective on a potential conclusion to the conflict in Iran to U.S. President Donald Trump, according to Russian state media reports on Saturday.

This disclosure follows Trump’s Friday statement that Russia will provide diesel to global markets amid soaring energy prices driven by the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Russia’s Interfax news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating that Putin conveyed the message to Trump “in agreement with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian,” per a Google translation.

Additional Russian media accounts indicate Putin spoke with Trump by phone after meeting Pezeshkian on the margins of a summit in Turkmenistan.

Interfax did not detail the specifics of how Iran envisions the war — which erupted on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets — reaching an end.

The White House did not immediately respond to Verum’s emailed request to confirm the reported conversation between Putin and Trump.

Russia supply deal

Trump announced Friday that Russia will deliver more than 4 million tons of diesel to the global market under an arrangement he said he agreed with Putin during a phone call.

Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons immediately after, Trump posted on Truth Social. Moscow will then provide another 3 million tons of diesel contingent on the condition of Russia’s refineries, Trump added.

The Treasury Department temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel through April 2027 under a general license issued Friday.

Iran has intensified attacks on oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, with vessels coming under fire almost daily as Tehran attempts to choke off a rebound in crude exports.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard official stated Wednesday that Iran will block all “illicit routes” through Hormuz, according to the Fars News Agency, an outlet considered close to the Guard.

The surge in tanker attacks coincides with crude oil exports from the Middle East rebounding in September to prewar levels, largely because the U.S. military escorted ships through Hormuz along Oman’s coast.

An interim agreement signed in June between the U.S. and Iran to pause hostilities to allow for negotiations quickly collapsed.

‘Gifts to Putin’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy immediately denounced Trump’s diesel deal with Putin. Ukraine’s leader warned that easing sanctions without a commitment from Russia to de-escalate the war will only prolong it.

“Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilized world,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post. “Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and perfidy. Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”

Diesel prices have surged worldwide as Ukraine has pounded Russian refineries, forcing Moscow to ban diesel exports to global markets. Iran and its Houthi allies have also attacked refineries in the Middle East, further constraining fuel supplies.

Trump faces mounting political pressure to lower fuel prices ahead of the November midterm elections. Republicans confront competitive races in conservative strongholds like Iowa, where farmers feel the pinch of high diesel prices.

Technologies

AI is Changing How Lawyers Work — and Putting the Billable Hour Under Pressure

AI is reshaping the legal industry by reducing the time needed for routine tasks, challenging the traditional billable hour model, and changing how lawyers learn and practice.

Artificial intelligence is now used by almost 90% of legal professionals in the U.K. and Ireland, and it’s putting one of the profession’s oldest conventions — the billable hour — under the microscope. That’s according to legal software company Clio’s U.K. & Ireland Legal Insights Report 2026.

It found that among firms using AI, almost 80% said they can handle more work without increasing resources, while over 70% said it cut costs by absorbing administrative work once done by support staff.

As a result, AI is challenging some of the assumptions on which the legal profession was built, forcing firms to reevaluate how their lawyers spend their time, how they charge for it and how new lawyers learn the ropes. You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 secondsNick Rowles-DaviesLexolent Some of the U.K.’s biggest firms are already putting this into practice.

A&O Shearman has worked with legal AI company Harvey to develop artificial intelligence agents for tasks, including reviewing loan agreements and analyzing regulatory filings, which it says can complete in minutes work that previously took several hours. Slaughter and May, meanwhile, has rolled out Harvey across all practice areas this year, including for regulatory research and document analysis.

Billable hour pressure The billable hour is central to the business model of many law firms, but when AI significantly reduces the time lawyers spend sifting through and drafting documents, the economics are no longer so straightforward. “You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 seconds,” Nick Rowles-Davies, founder and CEO of legal finance fund Lexolent, based in London and Dubai, told CNBC.

About one in five firms that have widely adopted AI report difficulty meeting billable-hour targets, according to Clio’s report. Globally, senior legal leaders expect the share of work charged by the hour to fall from 72% to 44% over the next two to three years, according to a Deloitte survey.

Routine work is the most exposed, Rowles-Davies said. “If you’ve got standard documents and you’re just putting in detail, then clearly that’s an automatic process.” But complex legal work still requires human judgment, he added, particularly when interpreting AI output and determining the right strategy for a client.

Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting betterJoshua LenonClio

AI and workloads

Whether AI efficiencies ultimately make lawyers’ working lives better may depend on what firms do with the time they get back. Clio’s report found that 51% of legal professionals work evenings, but only 32% want to, while 22% work weekends compared with 11% who would choose to.

Joshua Lenon, Clio’s New York-based lawyer-in-residence, believes some lawyers are already seeing the benefits. “Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting better,” Lenon told CNBC, as AI becomes more commonplace.

“People are really looking at these tools and saying, ‘This is making work better.’”

Technologies

Trump’s diesel agreement with Putin accused of contradicting Russia sanctions law

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a searing statement that the U.S. easing sanctions on Moscow “plays into Russia’s hands.”

President Donald Trump’s Friday announcement that Russia will supply diesel fuel to the global market marked an apparent pivot from recent efforts to pressure Moscow to end the Ukraine war by targeting Russian energy exports.

Trump claimed the move, unveiled with less than a month left in an affordability-focused midterm election, would swiftly bring down record-high diesel prices.

But commentators and critics were quick to highlight contradictions between the new policy and prior efforts by the U.S. to clamp down on Russian oil sales.

Those efforts most recently included the enactment of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, empowering Trump to impose tariffs up to 100% on the top purchasers of Russian crude oil or gas, among other restrictions. Trump signed the bill into law just three weeks ago.

“Congress just passed a law giving Trump the power to impose new tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil & gas,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said on X after Trump’s Friday announcement.

“Can America tariff America?” he quipped.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, accused Trump’s latest move of being “directly contrary to Congress’s intent in our bipartisan sanctions bill.”

Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute of International Economic Law, in an X post said that the relaxation of Russian diesel restrictions “pretty much proves the point that the Graham Russia Bill was not going to force the Trump Administration to increase economic pressure on Moscow.”

Some of the criticism crossed party lines.

“Through the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, we gave the president significant authorities and leverage against China and Russia to bring Putin’s war to an end with a negotiated settlement,” Rep.

Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in an X post. “Unfortunately, while I understand the desire to bring down diesel prices, I am concerned the lifting of sanctions on Russian oil will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine—emboldening more violence and destruction, as we have seen in recent days,” McCaul said.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s questions about the diesel agreement with Russia.

Less than a year earlier, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on multiple Russian oil companies in response to what it called “Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”

Trump also had previously slammed NATO allies for continuing to buy Russian oil. In a September 2025 Truth Social post, he wrote, “the purchase of Russian Oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.”

Later that month, Trump again harangued world leaders for doing business with Russia.

“They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?” he said in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. “They can’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia.”

Trump announced the diesel deal in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon after what he described as a “highly successful discussion” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Under the agreement, Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, then another 500,000 tons in November, followed by 1 million tons “immediately thereafter” and 3 million more depending on refinery conditions, Trump wrote.

The Treasury Department soon after said that Trump directed the Office of Foreign Assets Control to immediately issue a “temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.” OFAC specified that the sanctioned transactions will be authorized for about six months, until April 7.

Russia seemed to celebrate the move. “Russia-US cooperation on diesel and energy will benefit the world,” an X account associated with Putin’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev said in response to the announcement.

But Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose military has started targeting Russian oil refineries, said in a searing statement that the U.S. easing sanctions on Moscow “plays into Russia’s hands.”

“Any easing of sanctions against Russia without a clear and lasting de-escalation agreement with Russia is an obvious weakness,” Zelenskyy said. “Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”

“We count on America’s fair support for our defense of life, for our defense of people in Ukraine – and on the United States having a correspondingly strong conversation with Russia,” he said.

“A strong one, not a weak one,” he added.

Trump thanked Putin later Friday afternoon for enabling “massive amounts of oil” to come to the U.S.

“We need oil for the world, and this is diesel, which is what we need, so we’re very happy to get it,” Trump told reporters before heading to Syracuse, New York.

The Trump administration has previously eased some Russian energy sanctions temporarily, though more narrowly than Friday’s announcement.

Earlier this year, in an attempt to stabilize markets after the start of the Iran war, the Trump administration issued limited, 30-day waivers allowing countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil that was already in transit.

But some interpreted the latest move as a more significant step.

“It looks like Trump cut a deal with the devil,” Jeremy Siegel, professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Friday afternoon.

“It’s not a permanent solution at all. It’s sort of a short-term Band Aid,” Siegel said. “And cutting back on or eliminating sanctions on Russia for the invasion in Ukraine, I think, is a very unfortunate consequence.”