US state laws push age checks into the operating system
theregister.com • • technology
Key Points:
- California's Assembly Bill No. 1043, effective January 1, 2027, mandates operating system providers to collect and store users' age or birth date at account setup and share this information with app stores, aiming to enforce age verification for software applications.
- Similar laws in Colorado and New York require OS vendors to perform age attestation and share age data with app stores and online services, imposing fines for non-compliance, which raises concerns about privacy and government-mandated data sharing.
- While major commercial OS vendors like Microsoft and Apple already require user accounts and personal data, these laws pose significant challenges for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects, leading some like MidnightBSD and DB48X to restrict usage
