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In a fresh development, microsoft is building automated age verification directly into Windows 11 in the form of system-level APIs that will share your verified age with registered apps.
In a fresh development, rather, your age will be represented as one of several buckets (like “Under 10,” “10 to 12,” “13 to 15,” “16 to 17,” or “18+”). That’s according to this support page on the Windows Age APIs, spotted by Windows Current. To be clear, the system won’t pass your exact age or date of birth to said apps.
According to the latest update, none of these methods truly prove that someone is an adult, which is an issue for apps with mature content. Until now, apps that wanted to perform age verification had to rely on primitive methods, like requiring credit card details, using third-party identity checks, or trusting the user with a date of birth input or an “I am at least 18 years old” checkbox.
The report highlights that the move is in response to greater pressure from regulatory authorities in the US, UK, and EU, who are all pushing for stricter age verification laws. Microsoft’s intent is to centralize the age verification process with the Windows Age APIs, which buckets your age group and provides a status that indicates whether your age has been independently verified.
Industry observers note that using the Windows Age APIs, an app can ask two main questions: “Which age group does this user belong to?” and “Has the user’s age been independently verified?” Microsoft emphasizes that apps will not receive a user’s actual date of birth.
As part of the ongoing story, according to Microsoft, its “Digital Safety” ecosystem first validates the app to see if it has been properly registered and is allowed to to query for age verification. In other words, random apps won’t be allowed to snatch user ages arbitrarily. Note that not all apps are eligible to use the Windows Age APIs to ask these questions.
As part of the ongoing story, it’s unclear when exactly the enablement will happen, but it shouldn’t be too far off—most likely before the end of 2026. While the Windows Age APIs are currently documented in the Windows SDK, they haven’t yet been enabled in Windows 11.
In a fresh development, this article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
As part of the ongoing story, he has been writing on almost all IT topics for around 25 years, covering everything from news to reviews and buying guides. Hans-Christian Dirscherl began his IT life with Autoexec.bat and config.sys, Turbo-Pascal and C, Sinix and Wordperfect.
The report highlights that he's been with PCWorld since 2024 and writes about digital security and other computer-related topics. He was previously the Editor in Chief of MakeUseOf from 2018 to 2021 and the Founder/Editor of whatNerd. He has a B.S. In Computer Science. Joel is a Senior Editor at PCWorld and has been writing/editing consumer technology content for over 12 years.