Walter Finch
HEAVY users of online porn will receive alerts if they access the websites too often under the Spanish government’s new plans.
The messages will tell them to renew their ‘digital passport’ in order to ‘avoid being tracked’ in their porn usage.
The initiative is part of the new Digital Wallet app, which is intended to preserve a user’s anonymity when viewing porn while at the same time verifying their age.
Starting later this summer, adults must give their credentials using their electronic ID, digital certificate, or ‘the Cl@ve system’ to enjoy pornographic sites based in Spain.
Once your age is verified, the system will issue a pack of 30 tokens, valid for 30 days, after which it will be necessary to prove your age once again.
The idea of the tokens is to prevent the need for frequent identity checks which would in turn create privacy issues for the government’s policy planners.
Under this system, heavy porn users who use up all their tokens are at greater risk of being tracked in their usage by their need to verify their identity – hence the government’s plans to send them alerts.
The tokens will be issued by the ‘trusted entity’ of the General Secretariat of Digital Administration, which ‘will not generate a trace of the request’, according to sources from the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
They add that the application will be audited and certified by the National Cryptologic Centre to ‘ensure that there is no record’ of users’ porn habits, and therefore ‘it can never be hacked.’
Users need to download the Digital Wallet app, verify their age, and use tokens for access.
To enter the app or to use the credential, the user must identify himself each time with their fingerprint, facial recognition, or a code or pattern.
This data remains on the mobile and is not transferred to the application.
When typing the address of the porn site, a QR code will appear if the user on their computer and a link if they are using their mobile phone.
The user will have to scan the QR code or click on the link, which will activate a connection with the Digital Wallet.
This will then present the credential that proves the user is over age without giving away any details about them.
The content provider will verify the credential allow or deny access based on the evidence.
It will not be necessary to identify yourself every time you go to a porn site but only when each batch of tokens are generated.
You can only enter the same website a maximum of 10 times without having to use up tokens.
But the user can renew their set of tokens as many times as they want within the same month, so in effect there will not be limitations on how much porn a person can watch in a month.
The Digital Wallet app will also be used for online gambling.
