The bad - and I have stressed this to Apple support (politely!):

There is currently no procedural fallback.

No one at Apple seems to have come up with any kind of plan pre-release for people who don't fit with Apple's implementation of Highly Effective Age Assurance (HEAA).

There were mixed messages on release day about whether passports would work. After many attempts, I've got my phone to take a scan of my passport and submit that; but it invariably fails to upload (see attached). (2/7)

So the verification procedure insists on government ID, but doesn't work with one of the two forms of government ID generally available in the UK.

Most UK citizens will currently have no access to a Government-backed 'digital identity service' (and won't until the Gov.UK Wallet comes out).

There are third party digital identity services such as the Post Office EasyID scheme that are backed by government documents, but Apple doesn't work with them. (3/7)

Apple are trying to pass the buck.

The internal corporate line at Apple, as repeated twice by different levels of support, is that they did this because the UK Government told them to.

This is arse-covering bullshit and I told them as much (politely).

What they will have been given is the seven Ofcom-approved methods of HEAA and told to comply with that.

Apple's implementation of three of those seven HEAA methods - and the lack of fallbacks - is solely the result of decisions at Apple. (4/7)

This is also a safeguarding issue.

As I found out yesterday, one of the things locked down in 26.4 is that Content and Privacy Restrictions is locked on. You need to pass age verification to change it. Until I can prove I'm over 18, all of these features like location sharing are enabled and I can't disable them. For me, it's an annoying inconvenience.

For someone vulnerable in an abusive domestic situation - this could be considerably more serious. (5/7)

@CGM OK - how and where?

It’s entirely possible I missed something.

I’m going to Screen Time, and Content and Privacy Restrictions is currently enabled (per my previous screenshot).

If I try to disable it, it asks me to verify my age, and - when I can’t - keeps the restrictions enabled.

Have you had an Apple account longer than 18 years, perhaps?

@gmh @CGM As far as I'm aware this being allowed just means "an app can request this permission and you can choose to grant it". I still think it's a cockup bodging these things into the parental controls system so you get these issues, but I don't think it inherently means that your location is being sent anywhere.

FWIW: it just worked for me, but that's because I had a credit card in my Apple Pay wallet. My father had issues trying to get it to verify until I added one to his (which was not intuitive in the slightest). And while I think Apples implementation is one of the less intrinsically evil age verification, iOS 26.4 has actively got me to try using a phone with much more OSS system software

@tay @CGM Also, having read the relevant Ofcom guidelines this week; there are 7 ‘potentially HEAA’ methods; Apple seems to have done a partial implementation of three of them in a way that misses thousands of false negatives and locks down your device as a consequence, without warning you in advance. It’s shoddy stuff.

(I’m also not exactly enthused about people trying to shoehorn AV-enabling code into systemd…)