New ‘porn passport’ could be bad news for people who watch it too much

The Spanish government has introduced a 'porn passport', and it could result in embarrassment for heavy porn users.

It's an idea which has been gaining traction in a number of countries.

How it works is that each person has an electronic ID, a 'digital certificate' if you will, which contains their personal information.

The idea is that people will now have to use these digital credentials to access porn sites in Spain, preventing those who are underage from being able to look at images they're too young to be viewing.

It's something the UK has considered in the past, with supporters arguing that proper age verification checks would better safeguard children.

However, the government of the day scrapped the planned measure in 2019.

A 2019 study from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) found that over half of 11 to 13-year-olds had seen pornography, with most of them seeing it unitentionally.

Spain is trying to introduce a new 'porn passport' using a digital ID. (Getty Stock Photo)

A 'porn passport' which requires some verified credentials is a tougher barrier to crack than simply ticking a box to claim you're over 18, and that's what Spain is going to be bringing in.

It'll use their Digital Wallet app and according to Olive Press, the process 'will not generate a trace of the request' to avoid the potential leaking of a person's data.

They report that the data will remain on a person's device and won't be transferred to the app, and the idea is that the system will know how old the person trying to access porn is without knowing exactly who they are.

Otherwise the alternative would be that the government would quickly accumulate a database of people's porn habits.

"Oh god, it's telling me to fill up on porn tokens. I hope nobody else saw me get that alert." (Gorica Poturak/Getty)

The bad news for regular porn users comes in the form of how the 'porn passport' is going to work.

Under the system due to come into place once a person has verified their identity with their ID the system will issue them with a pack of 30 'tokens', each valid for 30 days, which can be used to get on porn sites.

Spaniards won't have to go through an identity check ever time they hop onto a porn site, only when they're applying for another batch of tokens.

Where this might trip up those with a heavy porn habit is that they'll start getting alerts when they need more tokens, which in turn might reveal what they like to get up to when nobody's looking.

While there might be some embarrassing alerts, there won't be a limit on the number of tokens a person could claim with the 'porn passport'.