ALERT: Age Verification is coming to Washington State
If lawmakers get their way, your favorite adult content sites will be gated behind invasive Age Verification checks.
What is KOCSA?
HB-2112, or the “Keep our Children Safe Act,” is an age verification bill that will require you to upload your driver’s license or credit card to view adult content.
- Any site with a significant amount of adult content (more than 33%) will be forced to require visitors upload their government IDs or input their credit card data before accessing the site.
- Unlike many other states, all methods require sensitive, identifiable information be divulged (ex: facial scanning is not a permitted verification method, real-world identity MUST be disclosed).
- Verification companies are supposed to delete the personally identifying data after verifying it — but this won’t happen in practice.
- Affected websites must place a “health warning” on their site. (This is fear mongering from anti-porn advocates — the science doesn’t back up their claims.)
- Creates potential liability for small adult content creators who upload their content to social media platforms (even though small creators have no control over the policies of massive platforms).
The Problems
It doesn’t protect kids.
Even a child can get around this bill’s restriction:
- Any viewer can just use a VPN to pretend they are in a different state/country to let them skip age verification. VPN services are easy to get, some are even free or built into some web browsers directly.
- Adult content sites located in overseas jurisdictions will never perform age verification, and will remain accessible to anyone in Washington even without a VPN.
Adults’ data WILL be leaked
Adults who do comply and share their identity with adult sites will be at significant risk of data breaches. Some recent history:
- Social media platform Discord leaked 70,000 ID images.
- Tea leaked 72,000 ID images.
- Pornhub leaked 200,000,000 data records to a ransomware gang.
- Equifax (who now also operates an AV product) leaked the personal data of 147,000,000 people.
Personal data that is collected will inevitably leak.
US Adult sites can’t survive AV
The simple reality is that most adult consumers are not willing to take such risks to their privacy and simply use an offshore, non-compliant site instead.
Compliant adult sites are seeing 90% ~ 99% drop off rates after requiring age verification. No site can survive that much loss of legitimate adult users. That’s why age verification was secretly called a backdoor ban on porn by Project 2025’s architect.
It is a tremendous burden on adult content creators and fans’ freedom of speech.
Follow the money
Two months prior to prefiling the bill, a lobbyist for the data broker industry made a $1,200 campaign contribution to the bill’s primary sponsor, Representative Mari Leavitt.
No one else benefits from this bill besides the data broker companies. It is their age verification systems that will profit from this legislation.
This bill is not a win for parents, it’s a win for data brokers.
The Solution
Use content filters
The only effective way to keep kids out of adult sites is for parents to enable the parental filters already on their child’s device. Content filters work even with VPN turned on. These filters work today, and without sacrificing the privacy of adults.
Take Action
If legislators don’t hear from you, they’ll assume you want this bill.
Similar legislation has already passed in 25 US states. And it won’t stop here — some states are already trying to ban VPNs.
You MUST speak up to stop the censorship now if you don’t want privacy-destroying Age Verification in Washington State.
Take a few minutes to write and/or call! Make your voice heard.
1) Write
The WA legislature page for HB-2112 has a simple government form you can fill out to register your concerns of the bill and it will mail it to your reps for you.
Write in to Oppose HB-2112 and express your privacy and freedom of speech concerns. Tell your legislators NO to Age Verification.
2) Call
For even more impact, also call your representatives.
Boost the movement:
3) Share
Help us build awareness by sharing this page with your friends. The more people we get holding their legislators accountable, the better chance we stand.
4) Stay engaged
Provide us your e-mail and we’ll keep you up to date with critical updates, like:
- A notification when the bill is scheduled for committee testimony so you can voice your opinion.
- When re-election comes around, a list of which Washington lawmakers are pro and anti privacy.
Your e-mail will not be sold or shared, it will only be used by us to notify you regarding our campaign to defend privacy.
Donate
Want to help us get the message to more people? Consider funding our campaign against AV in WA.
Go national:
We have to fight similar bills at the federal level, too! We need to stop bad internet bills like SCREEN Act & KOSA which both would require ID checks federally.