Age verification: Germany probably wants EUDI wallet instead of isolated solution | News

Age restrictions on the Internet are increasingly becoming an issue that also concerns governments in the EU. A challenge in this area is reliable age control: This should reliably assign a user to an age group without revealing information that allows tracking or even identification. The European Union is developing an open-source framework for this purpose, including for iOS. EU states can decide whether to implement this in their own app or rely on the Europe-wide implementation in the EUDI wallet. There are now many indications that the federal government has decided on option no. 2: online age checks in Germany should be carried out via the EUDI wallet.

This solution is a comprehensive project for storing documents and identities: European Union Digital Identity (EUDI) provides interfaces to store driving licenses, concert tickets, health insurance and social security certificates. The EUDI wallet is also intended to store training and study certificates, facilitate administrative procedures, hold flight tickets and authenticate mobile phone and other contracts. Maximum data protection should be guaranteed: The user’s identity is confirmed during setup; For requests from different apps, the user decides whether the EUDI wallet can provide the requested information.

EUDI wallet no earlier than 2027
EUDI wallet is currently under development. The EU Commission has set a tight time frame: every country should complete the EUDI wallet by the end of 2026. Germany currently plans to release the app to the general public in spring 2027. On the project website, the wallet advertises for partners: on the one hand, organizations that want to securely store digital documents in the EUDI wallet, and on the other hand, companies and authorities that access information from the wallet as service providers.

Each country decides independently
While the federal government has decided to implement proof of age via EUDI wallet, other countries are relying on independent apps. France, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Ireland are part of the pilot project. Both forms of implementation should use the same code base and be based on “zero-knowledge proofs”: Encrypted communication only provides proof of age and no additional information about the person. Whether this was successfully implemented in the current development stage is controversial: a security researcher was able to decrypt the app prototype within two minutes. Private-sector age verification providers like the Persona used by Discord rely on facial scans – the provider is accused by security researchers of additionally collecting extensive tracking data on the user and their device and storing it for up to three years.