Missouri to enforce mandatory age verification in three days

• Mandatory age verification lands in Missouri on November 30, 2025
• All websites containing 33% of "material harmful to minors" need to comply
• Missouri is the latest US state to enforce age verification rules

Starting from November 30, 2025, people in Missouri will need to prove they are over 18 years old to access adult-only content online.

Missouri is the latest of the US states to enact its form of age verification law. It's set to further fuel discussion around data privacy and security risks linked to age assurance methods, most likely provoking a yet another surge in usage of the best VPN apps.

Under the new rules, all websites or applications containing more than one-third "material harmful to minors" are required to verify their users are adults before granting them access. A provision that experts talking with TechRadar have criticised for its "vague" terms.

Violations of the rule are considered "an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful practice" under Missouri law, with online services facing up to $10,000 a day for non-compliance.

Instead, these adult online sites and services can perform age verification checks using digital ID, other government-issued identification documents, or other transactional data.

Crucially, mobile operating systems with at least 10 million devices in the US must provide digital age-verification "that a website or application can use to comply with" the rules.

How Missouri age verification could impact on your privacy

The Missouri law requires website and app providers to use all reasonable methods to secure user data, alongside an obligation not to retain any identifying information unless otherwise required by law enforcement. Yet, experts do not believe that these safeguards can be a real guarantee against data abuse or leaks.

"By forcing everyone to hand over their most valuable and sensitive identity data, the law builds out a dangerous new surveillance infrastructure instead of actually keeping young people safe," activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Molly Buckley, told TechRadar.

After all, in the UK, we saw firsthand how easy it was for sensitive age verification information to get compromised when Discord's third-party service got hacked, leaking over 70,000 government ID photos used for verifying user age.

According to Senior Policy and Advocacy Expert at the Internet Society, John Perrino, the Missouri law is mostly a "copy-paste version" of the main provisions included in similar legislation elsewhere in the country. This means that the same risks for greater surveillance, censorship, and accessibility apply.

The novelty here is that the likes of Google and Apple will need to provide a secure digital ID tool that websites could use for age verification. The problem? Big Tech giants are not exactly ready for that, with these Digital ID functions still confined to driver's licenses and airport passport checks.

"Even if this is the most secure thing on your phone, will people feel comfortable storing and sharing their driver's license or passport to access restricted apps and websites? Even the mere perception of a privacy intrusion drives people to less safe corners of the Internet," Perrino told TechRadar.

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