Australia testing hand scans to verify age. Does it work?

What if there was a way to verify someone’s age online without requiring ID or even using their appearance? If you could tell someone was an adult with 99% accuracy simply by assessing the way they move their hands?

That’s one of the methods being tested by the Australian federal government as it joins with a wave of governments around the world that are currently passing laws requiring social media, porn and gambling companies to take steps to restrict teens from using their services.

In response to the trend, an industry of companies that say they can do the hard work of figuring out a person’s age over the internet has emerged. Their methods include checking documents like driver’s licenses, passports and credit cards or, increasingly, forms of biometric analysis that use people’s physical features as a form of “age assurance” (or, in plain language, estimation). Facial analysis has received the most attention out of all forms of biometric analysis, but there are other novel solutions popping up.

One provider, French AI company Needemand, claims to be able to determine whether someone is an adult with 99% accuracy by analysing their hand movements. So said the company’s chief business officer Jean-Michel Polit in an interview with Crikey. It’s a remarkable claim that has yet to be independently verified. 

Needemand has put up its hand to supply one of the products tested in a federal government trial that will inform the requirements for social media companies under Australia’s forthcoming teen social media ban. It’s even been brought up in an interview by eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who says she met with the company’s staff, as an example of an “innovative solution”.  

Polit told Crikey that the seven-year-old company came up with its hand movement model, called BorderAge, after its founder “stumbled” upon medical research showing the link between age and hand movements.

The company claims that it has trained machine learning algorithms on footage capturing tens of thousands of sets of peoples’ hand movements collected since 2017. Polit says that the technology doesn’t use appearance — so things like wrinkles, size, tattoos or jewelry aren’t used as clues — but only the actual movements of the user as captured in the video. BorderAge has been designed to work using less than 30 seconds footage from a smartphone camera. 

“Our nervous system changes every day from birth to adulthood, and as it changes, we make these movements ever slightly differently,” Polit explained.

The appeal of this technology is clear: people’s hands are essentially unidentifiable to a third-party in the vast majority of cases. One of the major public hurdles to online age restrictions has been that reliable age verification and assurance techniques require handing over information that people may feel uncomfortable sharing, such as ID or images of their face. Using their hands to prove their age would likely be more palatable to people — if it works.

Needemand claims that its internal testing found that BorderAge is able to determine whether someone is an adult 99% of the time. Its testing sample was smartphone-captured footage of people of all ages, from minors to the elderly, Polit said. Its testing methodology was validated by a UK company Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS), which is running Australia’s age assurance technology trial. Polit says that a porn company has signed a contract to start using its technology and will be in production by the end of the month. Crikey was shown a recorded video of BorderAge in practice, but did not get a chance to use or see it used live. 

But despite the company’s excitement, there’s still scant evidence BorderAge can do what it says it can. No-one outside of Needemand has independently tested or used BorderAge yet. The product isn’t currently in use anywhere. And Polit acknowledged that the company is still sorting out its technological infrastructure so it can be used by others, even though he says the underlying technology already works.

Polit said Needemand is close to signing a contract with a company to host its product, the last hurdle before rolling out BorderAge. He mentioned that an Australian association, Retail Drinks Australia, wanted to be able to “test our solution very soon”. 

A spokesperson for Retail Drinks Australia told Crikey that, after receiving a cold email from Needemand, a staff member “did have a very brief introduction/courtesy phone conversation with their company representative, and nothing further”. 

The ACCS will test Needemand’s product as part of its Australian trial (the full list of companies to be included in the trial is expected to be announced later today). The trial will independently test these technologies, including assessing their accuracy and reliability, as well as other aspects like their ease of use, freedom from bias, and data security. 

Polit said he is optimistic about how his product will compare to other age verification and assurance methods.

“There’s no personal data that is collected at any time. We’re 99% accuracy with 100% privacy,” he said.

The ACCS is due to hand its report to the federal government by the middle of the year. 

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