Australia's Forcing Age Verification on Search Engines and Social Media - Here's How to Opt Out

Australia is ramping up its online safety enforcement — and if you’re using mainstream social media or search engines down under, get ready to show your ID.

Read the full article on Substack.

In early July, regulators updated the Online Safety Code with a new addition: Schedule 3, which now brings search engines under the same age-verification policies already targeting social platforms. Starting December 2025, anyone with a search engine account in Australia will be required to verify their age.

The stated goal? Protecting children from exposure to online porn, violence, and self-harm content. While the intention sounds noble, the method—forced age verification through “age assurance measures”—raises red flags for privacy advocates.

🧾 Read the full code update here (PDF)

Who's Affected?

The requirements only apply to people who hold accounts with services that have legal or operational control over search results. So if you’re using Google, Bing, or another major platform while signed in, you’re going to be subject to verification.

Interestingly, you’re exempt if you don’t have an account. This means anonymous users avoid age checks—though they’ll still be subject to sub-measures like automatic image blurring of explicit or violent content in search results.

Still, given how deeply embedded accounts are into daily online life—especially on mobile—this move affects the vast majority of users in Australia.

What You Can Do

If you don’t like the idea of being scanned, tagged, and tracked just to use the internet, it might be time to leave these Big Tech platforms behind. There are plenty of search engines that don’t require an account or force age verification—and still give you solid results.

Here are a few we recommend:

🔍 Above Search – Part of the Above Suite, this search engine is powered by SearxNG, an open-source metasearch tool. It lets you pick which engines you want to pull results from (like Brave, Mojeek, Wikipedia, and others), all without tracking, ads, or profiling.

🔍 Presearch – No account needed, and though they’ve added more ads over the years, their privacy policy remains stronger than most.

🔍 Gigablast – A rare, independent search engine and open-source crawler. No accounts, no ads, and refreshingly fast results.

Why This Matters

This may seem like a local issue—but it's part of a growing global pattern. Governments are increasingly using “online safety” as justification to roll out ID checks and surveillance systems that chip away at online anonymity.

Once that door is open, it rarely stays limited to adult content. These controls often expand to speech, commerce, and access to basic information.

If you value your digital autonomy, the time to act is now—before account-based ID becomes the default everywhere.

So what do you think?
Would you give up your ID just to search online?
Are we heading toward a future where privacy is only for those who fight for it?

Let us know your thoughts—and if you're ready to start opting out, start with your tools. You don’t have to give up the internet… just the platforms that don’t respect you.

If this topic hits home—especially as a parent, educator, or student—join us next month for our upcoming webinar: “Back to School Tech Awareness.” We’ll dive into the technologies being pushed into schools, the hidden surveillance built into apps and devices, and what families can do to stay informed and protected.

🛡️ Protect your kids. Protect your future. Register here.

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