New America’s Open Technology Institute called for the use of zero-knowledge proofs, which verify a user’s age without disclosing any personal information.On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court allowing a Texas law requiring users verify their ages before accessing porn websites, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has allowed a Mississippi law requiring that users verify their ages before accessing social media platforms to go into effect while the legal cases against it are pending.

Those laws, like many others, are designed by their sponsors to protect children from obscene content, but opponents say they violate users’ First Amendment rights and are an undue burden to access content. But privacy concerns remain around age verification technology, even as it is popular in other countries. And in a bid to reduce some of those concerns, a new brief from think tank New America’s Open Technology Institute urged states to use zero-knowledge proofs to verify users’ ages and do so while protecting their privacy.

Zero-knowledge proofs verify a user’s data without disclosing any information other than whether that data is valid. It means the user can prove their information to the verifying party without revealing that information itself, just its validity.

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