Articles

An image of Robin with accompanying text that reads "Thoughts from our CEO, Robin Tombs, February 2025".

Thoughts from our CEO

In this blog series, our CEO Robin Tombs will be sharing his experience, whilst focusing on major themes, news and issues in the world of identity verification and age assurance. This month, Robin talks about the future of digital IDs in the UK, his hopes for our Digital ID network and thresholds for facial age estimation.   Visions for digital IDs in the UK Tony Blair recently stated in The Times that high adoption of reusable digital ID in the UK is inevitable. But that’s only half of the digital ID story. He says, “Digital ID is a personal

9 min read

Deepfake attacks: Rising fraud trends and our experience in preventing them

In 2024, we witnessed a significant increase in the number of deepfake attacks, or injection attacks during age and identity verification checks. The percentage of attacks increased from 1.6% to 3.9%. In absolute terms, this is a significant rise in the total number of attacks we have detected as we significantly expanded our services in 2024. We now perform over 5 million checks per week across all our services. With the introduction of various regulations globally, companies have been obliged to implement more robust age or identity checks for their users.  We have seen injection attacks across identity verification

2 min read

Defining age verification and age assurance

Age is becoming an increasingly important focus for governments globally, with legislation being enacted across multiple states and countries. Our latest report looks at: The difference between age verification and age estimation Why self declaration is not age assurance The importance of balancing proportionality and privacy Download

1 min read
An image of a young girl using a laptop. The accompanying text next to the image reads “Children's Online Privacy Protection Act - United States”.

An overview of the COPPA updates (and what it means for your business)

The United States Federal Trade Commission has released its updates to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule. It aims to strengthen key privacy protections for children online and better reflect the challenges faced in the modern digital age. The updates introduce stricter requirements for the collection, use and sharing of children’s data. However, it’s worth noting that the rule doesn’t include an explicit exception for the use of children’s personal information solely for age verification. This complicates compliance for platforms that wish to implement more robust age checking than self-declaration.  Yoti is ready to assist companies with

13 min read
Woman buying knife online

Age assurance for online knife sales

At the end of January, the UK Government announced they will introduce stricter age checks for online knife sales. Buyers will need to submit a copy of their photo ID, such as a driving licence, as well as proof of address, such as a utility bill. The same person who bought the knife will have to show ID again on delivery, and no knife packages can be left on the doorstep. These measures are part of the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill, expected to be introduced in Parliament this Spring. While knife crime is a key focus of the

7 min read
Illustration of email based age estimation to determine if user is over 18

Verifying age with email address age estimation

As legislation increasingly serves to protect children online, businesses and platform operators require efficient and privacy-conscious methods to verify user ages. Email address verification is just one of these methods, leveraging email metadata to estimate a user’s age without collecting further personal information. This guide explores how email age estimation works, its reliability, regulatory compliance, and how it performs as a tool for businesses that wish to balance user experience and risk.   What is email address age verification? Email address age verification is a method of age assurance used by websites and online operators to determine

5 min read