Texas’ New App Store Age Verification Law Has Serious Privacy Issues
App stores in Texas are getting an age verification feature, meaning users will soon have to provide some form of identification to download anything from the Google Play and Apple App stores, regardless of the app’s content.
Earlier this week, Governor Greg Abbott signed the Texas App Store Accountability Act into law early next year. The new law, which is said to make kids safer online, has significant implications for user privacy and data security.
What does it take to verify age in the Texas app store?
The Texas law would require Google and Apple to verify the age of all users before downloading any app through their app stores, even if the app does not contain sensitive or age-appropriate content. Parents would have to provide consent for minors to download apps or make purchases, and app stores would have to verify that parents or guardians have the legal authority to make such decisions for their children. App stores would also have to tell app developers what age category the user falls into (child, teen, older teen, or adult).
While the details have not yet been finalized, this means that Google and Apple will have to collect some form of user identification, whether a driver’s license, passport or other government-issued ID, or biometric data like a face scan, for anyone using their app stores in Texas. Even more documentation will be required for parents proving legal guardianship of underage users.
Earlier this year, Utah passed a similar bill that puts the responsibility for centralizing age verification on app stores, and while its requirements are slightly less onerous, they’re not much better at ensuring your privacy.
How Age Verification Puts Your Privacy at Risk
Privacy experts, as well as Apple and Google, have sounded the alarm about the implications of age verification, noting that requiring all users to provide sensitive personal information contained in data-intensive documents that can verify your age is a form of digital surveillance . It creates an identifiable record of online activity and increases the risk that the data will be used, shared or sold (unlike physical identity checks, which are short-lived and impermanent).
Age verification also raises security concerns about how users’ sensitive data is collected and stored. Data breaches are a fact of life in 2025, and people may have little (if any) knowledge of whether their data is being used and stored without their consent, how it is being used and stored , and no recourse if it is compromised.
Aaron Mackey, director of free speech and transparency at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , notes that the Texas law has no built-in safeguards to protect user data, such as minimizing what is collected and shared and how long it is stored. Additionally, there are risks associated with the possibility that app stores will use third-party verification services to comply, meaning data will be accessible to multiple parties.
The EFF and the ACLU also argue that online age verification requirements violate users’ First Amendment rights because they can make protected speech inaccessible (if adults don’t have valid identification, or facial recognition systems inaccurately detect ages, or minors can’t obtain parental consent) or force people to choose between protecting their privacy and staying online.
“If I have to provide that level of personal information because the government requires it just to download an app from an app store, I’m going to be really concerned about what’s going to happen to my data and might just decide not to download the app or even use that app store,” McKee says.