AB-1043 “Age verification signals: software applications and online services.”
Text https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
Other info https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
California AB 1043 signed. Mandatory os-level, device-level, app store, and even developer-required age verification for all computing devices.



Yeah reading through the bill I’m feeling better about it.
Where an “Account Holder” is:
The way I read this, this bill actually assumes the person installing it is over 18 and an adult. (Let’s not argue with them on that). It’s simply saying that "You need to provide a way to create child accounts, and your app stores will need to respect that).
What I do not see is that OS’s must validate IDs or anything.
“Mom or dad need to set the age bracket for junior so that apps rated NSFW can’t be downloaded”
Honestly, rereading it, this is how I would do age protection if I were to do it. Rereading this multiple times now, this might be the most privacy safe way to validate age, shut up lawmakers who cry “what about teh children!!!” and let us adults move on in peace.
You buy jr a laptop, it’ll ask on account creation how old they are. That’ll be a flag they can’t modify that will be passed into browsers and app stores. That will prevent children from accessing content they can’t. Adults then continue on. Jr grows up and either buys his own device, or mom and dad swap their account to adult.
If parents want nanny software they can install it on windows, no need to forcefeed this bullshit on everyone else.
It’s going to be a drop-down that a parent can select on account creation. No one is being forced into it, unless mom bought your device.
Hopefully you’re right, and the law doesn’t allow for an expansion of this to include “just give google your id bro”.
You can read it, it’s in your link. From what I read it explicitly says they cannot gather more info than they need.
Oh I know, but I’m hoping that Google can’t find another law that enables it. They have money for good lawyers for these things.
Google could do it right now if they wanted to. It’s not against the law to require your customers to provide PII to use services. It just opens them to bad press, liability for mishandling the data, and potentially liability for knowing a user is a minor and showing them mature content anyway.
This seems way less insane than the ‘let’s model online age verification on pubs’ laws we’ve seen in places like the UK and France.