The UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”), has fined Reddit £14.47 million for unlawfully processing children’s personal data.
The penalty, covering a period from May 2018 to July 2025, stems from Reddit’s failure to implement effective age assurance mechanisms; Reddit instead relied on self-declaration, which the ICO deemed insufficient.
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On Tuesday, the ICO announced it had fined Reddit, an American social news aggregation website and discussion portal, £14.47 (US$19.56) million for “serious failures in age assurance under UK data protection law” and so using “children’s personal information unlawfully.”
In short, the fine was for failing to implement age verification on its platform as dictated by the UK’s Online Safety Act. Or as Infowars put it, “Because Reddit let users self-declare their age at signup, a method the ICO called trivially easy for children to bypass, the regulator concluded Reddit ‘did not have a lawful basis for processing the personal information of children under the age of 13’. Children’s data was used ‘in ways they could not understand, consent to or control’.”
“The UK’s data protection regulator says it’s protecting children. What it’s actually building is a mandatory identity verification system that turns anonymous internet use into a surveillance exercise for every adult in the country,” Infowars said.
Reddit’s self-declaration uses selfie-based age estimation or government ID upload, processed through the Peter Thiel-backed identity verification company Persona.
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Security researchers have recently found that Persona performs 269 distinct verification checks per user, facial recognition screening against watchlists, risk and similarity scores generated for each person, internet and government database searches for potential matches, financial data checks and multiple forms of biometric analysis on submitted selfies.
“To use Reddit without restrictions in the UK, you now submit your face or your government credentials to a third-party surveillance system. The ICO calls this progress. It looks more like an identity profiling operation that happens to include an age check,” Infowars noted.
Persona’s privacy policy indicates that they extend surveillance and profiling of users even further – and since users of Reddit will be unaware that Persona is being used, Reddit users are unknowingly submitting to Persona’s “privacy policy.”
“[Persona’s privacy policy] says it may collect identifiers, device information and geolocation data from third parties, including data brokers, marketing partners and ‘publicly available sources…such as open government databases’,” Infowars highlighted.
Adding, “Reddit says it doesn’t see photos submitted to Persona and only receives a user’s verification status and provided birthdate. What Persona builds from everything else is outside Reddit’s control and, apparently, outside the ICO’s concern.”
The fine is the largest ever issued by the ICO for breaches of children’s “privacy.” The decision considered the number of affected children, the potential harm, the duration of the failings and Reddit’s global turnover. Reddit has announced it intends to appeal the ruling.
The Register asked Reddit to comment. A spokesperson said: “Reddit doesn’t require users to share information about their identities, regardless of age, because we are deeply committed to their privacy and safety. The ICO’s insistence that we collect more private information on every UK user is counterintuitive and at odds with our strong belief in our users’ online privacy and safety. We intend to appeal the ICO’s decision.”
The appeal is worth watching because Reddit has identified something the ICO has not answered: how does forcing mass biometric data collection protect privacy?
In its announcement of the fine, the ICO said it “is keeping Reddit’s processing of children’s personal information under review as part of ongoing work focusing on online platforms that primarily rely on self-declaration – an area of focus for the ICO.” And, “[the ICO] will continue to work closely with Ofcom, which has responsibility for enforcing the Online Safety Act, to ensure the efforts are coordinated.”
Reddit is not the only platform being “reviewed” for breaches of children’s “privacy.” The ICO is investigating the age-assurance practices of at least 17 platforms “popular with children in the UK,” including Discord, Pinterest, and X. The diagram below, published by the ICO, illustrates the pervasiveness of the UK government’s attempt to control online discourse worldwide in the name of “children’s safety.”
Featured image taken from ‘UK’s Online Safety Act takes effect with regulator action underway’, Tech Informed, 18 March 2025
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Categories: Breaking News, World News