How your phone will change under new government rules on explicit images

This morning, Sir Keir Starmer made a major announcement that could change the way everyone in the UK uses their phone.

He gave tech companies three months to bring in measures that will prevent children from sending or receiving nude pictures on their devices – or the government will change the law to force them.

The Home Office said this move would make the UK the first country in the world where children cannot take, share or view nude images on their phone.

But what will this actually involve, and what changes can we expect to see on the devices we use every day?

Children’s charity the NSPCC has been one of the top organisations pushing for these measures to be introduced.

Lewis Keller, the charity’s senior policy officer for child safety online, told Metro the tech has existed for a while and has become ‘increasingly sophisticated’.

He said: ‘Apple are one case, where they use this technology on iMessages and iCloud at the moment.

‘It was something that they rolled out fairly recently, so it shows that it can happen already.’

Apple’s ‘Communication Safety’ feature, which blurs out potentially harmful images and asks users if they are sure they want to see them, was introduced more than five years ago.

However, the system described by Lewis goes further.

As soon as it recognises nudity, the image is blacked out on the screen – there’s no blurring or pixelation, the screen simply goes black and users are not able to override it.

And that doesn’t just happen to pictures or video that are saved on the device before being sent out. The blocking even works on livestreams, which are widely used in online communities of child sex abusers.

The government wants the firms that produce these devices to ensure this technology applies across a child’s phone, not just on specific apps.

What will adults have to do?

So, the obvious next question: how do you ensure this only affects children, and adults still have the freedom to do whatever they like?

According to Lewis, tech exists to specifically detect child sexual abuse material, but this is a ‘more difficult form of detection technology’ as the age of the person in the image must be determined.

A simpler solution – which appears to be the approach advocated by the government – involves these firms updating their devices’ operating system, so the child-friendly mode that blocks nudity becomes the default.

Adults will need to go through an age assurance process to turn that mode off, then they are able to use their phone as they did before.

Will this be a one-off process?

For this to be effective in the long term, the UK’s phone users may find themselves having to complete these checks on a regular basis.

Lewis said the case of ‘hand-me-down devices’ from older people to younger people shows ‘why it’s so important that there is some requirement for you to do the age assurance every year’.

He suggested: ‘Every operating system update, it would be expected to take place again.’

Since the changes would come through a system update and not through hardware, they would apply to all existing devices as well as new ones.

With the government’s deadline now in place, all adult British phone users may find themselves having to verify their age within the next three months.

Lewis said: ‘It’s really important that users know this is being used to protect child users against abuse online, and wouldn’t be used to collect data or prevent them from doing the sort of things that they would like to do when they’re online.’

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