Roblox has agreed to introduce stronger child safety measures in Australia after the country’s online safety regulator found several gaps that allowed adults to contact children and view information linked to their accounts. The company now has three months to implement the changes under a court-enforceable undertaking.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner said its testing earlier this year found four major problems with Roblox’s existing protections, despite the company previously introducing measures designed to improve safety for younger users.
The regulator found that adults could send connection requests to young Australian children without parental or carer consent, while adults and children could also interact through posts on forums outside game environments. Children’s connections were publicly visible across Roblox, while profiles could expose account names, avatars, interests and details about their connections without an option to restrict access.
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Roblox has three months to strengthen child safety
Under the agreement, Roblox will prevent adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent and make children’s accounts private by default. The company will also improve its reporting system so users receive information about complaint outcomes.
Roblox must also appoint an independent third-party auditor to examine whether its safety measures work effectively, including the age-estimation systems used by the platform.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the independent review will prevent Roblox from being able to “mark their own homework,” with the regulator describing this as the first third-party auditing requirement imposed under Australia’s Online Safety Act.
Inman Grant said:
“Ultimately, our goal is to drive companies to make their services safer for children and young people. Where safety by design has not been deployed comprehensively at the front end, we won’t hesitate to ensure that these risks have been responsibly remediated.”
Roblox maintains that it complies with its obligations under Australia’s Online Safety Act, but it has accepted the additional requirements. If Roblox breaches the undertaking, eSafety can ask the Federal Court to order the company to comply and impose other measures the court considers appropriate.
The regulator estimates that around 1.7 million Australian children use Roblox, making these changes particularly significant for one of the country’s most popular games among younger users.
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