Continuous Age Assurance
Regula CEO to Discuss Continuous Age Assurance at Identity Week Europe 2026
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Age verification is broken — and a thriving black market proves it. Arif Mamedov, CEO of Regula Forensics, will take the stage at Identity Week Europe 2026 in Amsterdam on June 9 to argue that checking a user's age once at sign-up is no longer enough. His session, titled "Verified Once, Assumed Forever," lands as governments worldwide scramble to keep minors off social media and adult platforms. GlobeNewswire reports that older users are now selling verified accounts to teenagers, fueling a secondary market worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The regulatory pressure is real and accelerating. Australia banned social media for under-16s in December 2025. The U.S. Senate passed "COPPA 2.0" in March 2026. The European Commission adopted an EU-wide age verification blueprint on April 29, 2026, targeting full rollout by year-end, according to the European Commission. Yet 40% of U.S. children aged 8 to 12 still use social media despite existing age limits, Usercentrics reports.
Verified Accounts Are Being Bought and Sold Online
The core problem Mamedov will address is what industry insiders call the "Verification Gap." Most platforms check a user's age once — at sign-up. After that, they assume the same person is always behind the screen. That assumption is wrong. Accounts get shared with younger siblings, handed down, or sold outright. GlobeNewswire notes that marketplaces for established Gmail, Reddit, and social media profiles now operate openly online.
Mamedov argues that accounts "can be shared among family members, transferred to younger siblings, or even bought and sold online," according to GlobeNewswire. In Q1 2025, 38% of failed age checks were caused specifically by "borrowed or purchased adult IDs," Shufti Pro reported. The one-time check model, Mamedov says, treats age as a fact confirmed at the door — not as an ongoing trust state.
Continuous Monitoring Is the Fix — But Privacy Groups Push Back
Regula's proposed solution is "Continuous Identity Assurance." Instead of a single check, platforms would use ongoing, trigger-based re-verification. This could include behavioral signals — how a user types or holds their phone — to flag when the account may have changed hands. Terrapinn reports that Mamedov's session will cover how these systems can work without building permanent identity databases.
Privacy advocates are not convinced. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls these systems "surveillance infrastructure" that creates "honeypots" of sensitive data, according to EFF. The ACLU warns that continuous monitoring is a "privacy nightmare" and that "what starts as a privacy issue can quickly affect fundamental rights," Identity.org reports. Critics argue there is "no technology available that is entirely privacy-protective and fully accurate."
Governments Are Passing Laws Faster Than Tech Can Keep Up
The legal landscape is shifting fast. On May 29, 2026, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed a bill requiring parental consent for social media users under 16 — drawing immediate legal threats from tech lobby group NetChoice, Biometric Update reported. NetChoice, which represents Meta, Google, and TikTok, has filed lawsuits in over a dozen U.S. states, arguing age-gating mandates violate the First Amendment.
In the UK, traffic to adult sites dropped 47% after the Online Safety Act took effect. But analysts warn this may push users toward "riskier and unregulated corners of the internet," according to Shufti Pro. VPN usage surges by as much as 76% in countries with strict age-gating, as users simply route traffic through less-regulated regions, Cybernews found.
A $280 Billion Compliance Bill Looms for U.S. App Developers
Moving to continuous age assurance won't be cheap. Small businesses face an estimated $20,000 to $80,000 in upfront compliance costs per app, according to Trusted Future. Applied across the 3.5 million apps in the U.S. market, the total bill could reach $280 billion. A single completed age check already costs businesses an average of $1.39, iDenfy reports.
Despite the costs, the market for age verification software is booming. It is projected to reach $5 billion globally by 2033, according to Ondato. The stakes are equally high for platforms that do nothing — Australian law now allows fines of up to AUD $49.5 million for platforms that fail to keep minors out, Biometric Update reports. The question at Identity Week Europe is whether the industry can build systems that are both secure and private before regulators run out of patience.
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