Roblox must make changes after failing to block adults creeping on kids

在未能阻止成年人骚扰未成年人后，Roblox 必须做出整改

Despite making changes last fall to help block adults from messaging unknown children, Roblox is still failing to stop adults from creeping on kids in other ways, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said on Thursday. 尽管去年秋天 Roblox 做出了一些调整以帮助阻止成年人向陌生儿童发送消息，但澳大利亚电子安全专员朱莉·因曼·格兰特（Julie Inman Grant）周四表示，Roblox 仍未能阻止成年人通过其他方式骚扰儿童。

Suspecting that Roblox may not be doing enough to stop child exploitation, eSafety conducted testing earlier this year that flagged alarming gaps in Roblox safeguards. The agency found that adult strangers could still send connection requests to kids, whose “profiles and biographies, including account names, number and names of connections, avatar images, and non-sensitive biographical information such as their interests were visible to anyone on the Roblox platform, with no option to restrict the visibility of this information.” 由于怀疑 Roblox 在制止儿童剥削方面做得不够，电子安全专员办公室（eSafety）今年早些时候进行了测试，并发现了 Roblox 安全防护机制中令人担忧的漏洞。该机构发现，成年陌生人仍然可以向儿童发送好友请求，而这些儿童的“个人资料和简介（包括账户名称、好友数量和名单、头像，以及兴趣爱好等非敏感个人信息）对 Roblox 平台上的任何人都是可见的，且无法限制这些信息的可见性。”

Such requests did not trigger parental alerts, eSafety found, and bad actors could also search kids’ visible-to-anyone contact lists for more targets. Perhaps even more concerning, adults could also search for kids and comment on their posts “without parental or carer consent” in “forums outside game environments,” eSafety said. eSafety 发现，此类请求不会触发家长提醒，不法分子还可以搜索儿童公开的好友列表以寻找更多目标。更令人担忧的是，eSafety 指出，成年人还可以在“游戏环境之外的论坛”中搜索儿童并对其帖子进行评论，且“无需家长或监护人同意”。

Australia’s Online Safety Act requires that platforms prevent unwanted contact between adults and minors. It also mandates setting children’s accounts to private by default. Although Roblox “believes it is meeting its obligations,” the online gaming platform—which 1.7 million Australian kids use—has entered a court-enforceable agreement to make changes in the next three months. 澳大利亚的《在线安全法》要求平台防止成年人与未成年人之间发生不必要的接触，并强制要求将儿童账户默认设置为私密。尽管 Roblox “认为自己已履行了义务”，但这家拥有 170 万澳大利亚儿童用户的在线游戏平台已签署了一项具有法律约束力的协议，承诺在未来三个月内进行整改。

Upcoming measures will prevent adults from contacting kids without parental consent across the platform, Roblox has promised. Providing better protections for kids starts with “strengthening the account settings of children’s accounts so they are private by default,” eSafety said, and ends with Roblox making it easy to report unwanted contact and notifying users of outcomes after reports are made. Roblox 承诺，即将采取的措施将防止成年人在未经家长同意的情况下在全平台联系儿童。eSafety 表示，为儿童提供更好的保护，首先要“加强儿童账户的设置，使其默认处于私密状态”，并要求 Roblox 简化举报不当接触的流程，并在举报后及时通知用户处理结果。

Those are critical protections for Australia’s second most popular online game for kids, Inman Grant said. “We want to ensure that any platform with a high preponderance of kids to be a safe place where they can enjoy the benefits of online gaming, creativity, and connection, including building their own worlds and experiences online,” Inman Grant said. “But those benefits can only be realized when effective safeguards are in place to protect children from serious harms such as grooming, child sexual exploitation, sextortion, or recruitment into violent extremism.” 因曼·格兰特表示，对于澳大利亚第二大儿童在线游戏来说，这些保护措施至关重要。“我们希望确保任何拥有大量儿童用户的平台都能成为一个安全的地方，让他们能够享受在线游戏、创造力和社交带来的益处，包括在线构建自己的世界和体验，”因曼·格兰特说，“但只有在有效的安全保障措施到位，保护儿童免受诱骗、儿童性剥削、性勒索或被招募参与暴力极端主义等严重伤害时，这些益处才能真正实现。”

Roblox agrees to independent monitoring

Roblox 同意接受独立监督

Additionally, Inman Grant said that the regulator’s testing suggested that Roblox can no longer be trusted to independently verify that its child safety tools are compliant with Australian laws. Moving forward, Roblox cannot “mark their own homework,” Inman Grant said, adding that the platform has agreed to third-party auditing. 此外，因曼·格兰特表示，监管机构的测试表明，Roblox 已不再值得被信任去独立验证其儿童安全工具是否符合澳大利亚法律。因曼·格兰特称，未来 Roblox 不能再“自己批改作业”，并补充说该平台已同意接受第三方审计。

Roblox is likely hoping that allowing the audits will demonstrate that it is going further than other companies to protect kids. In January, the company announced that it would become the first large online gaming platform to require facial age checks. Such biometric age checks have proved controversial, unpopular with users, and alarming to privacy advocates, who see even the latest age verification tools as flawed. Roblox 可能希望通过接受审计来证明其在保护儿童方面比其他公司做得更多。今年 1 月，该公司宣布将成为首个要求进行面部年龄验证的大型在线游戏平台。这种生物识别年龄检查引发了争议，不仅不受用户欢迎，还引起了隐私倡导者的警惕，他们认为即使是目前最新的年龄验证工具也存在缺陷。

And while Roblox says it usually automatically deletes selfies submitted for age verification, it may retain that data for up to 30 days, leaving it open to potential breaches. Asked for comment, Roblox sent Ars a statement. “This undertaking follows constructive dialogue with eSafety and comes after the recent rollout of industry-leading safety features on Roblox—including the introduction of new Roblox Kids and Select accounts for under-16s,” Roblox’s spokesperson said. “We have delivered on the commitments we made to eSafety over the last 12 months and will continue to work towards our shared goal of keeping Australian children safe online.” 虽然 Roblox 表示通常会自动删除用于年龄验证的自拍照，但它可能会将这些数据保留长达 30 天，从而面临潜在的数据泄露风险。在被要求置评时，Roblox 向 Ars 发送了一份声明。Roblox 发言人表示：“这一承诺是在与 eSafety 进行建设性对话后做出的，此前我们刚在 Roblox 上推出了行业领先的安全功能，包括为 16 岁以下用户引入新的 Roblox Kids 和 Select 账户。我们已经履行了过去 12 个月内向 eSafety 做出的承诺，并将继续朝着保障澳大利亚儿童在线安全这一共同目标努力。”

Roblox age estimation will also be audited

Roblox 的年龄估算系统也将接受审计

Inman Grant emphasized that this is the first time Australia has required third-party auditing since the Online Safety Act became enforceable. The agreement came after eSafety warned Roblox last October that officials remained “highly concerned by ongoing reports regarding the exploitation of children on the Roblox service, and exposure to harmful material.” 因曼·格兰特强调，这是自《在线安全法》生效以来，澳大利亚首次要求平台进行第三方审计。此前，eSafety 曾在去年 10 月警告 Roblox，称官员们对“有关 Roblox 服务上剥削儿童以及接触有害内容的持续报道仍深感担忧”。

For Roblox, the deal goes beyond helping eSafety monitor how well its safeguards are working. The third-party auditing will also give the agency a window into Roblox’s age estimation tools, eSafety said. If it seems like Roblox is mislabeling kids as adults, giving them access to adult content, or exposing them to adult predators, the company could face steep fines under the Online Safety Act. 对于 Roblox 而言，这项协议的意义不仅在于帮助 eSafety 监控其安全防护措施的有效性。eSafety 表示，第三方审计还将使该机构能够深入了解 Roblox 的年龄估算工具。如果发现 Roblox 将儿童误标为成年人，使其能够接触成人内容或暴露在成年掠夺者面前，该公司可能会根据《在线安全法》面临巨额罚款。

Last October, eSafety warned that it was prepared to “use the full range of its enforcement powers, as appropriate” to stop grooming and exploitation on Roblox, including “seeking penalties of up to $49.5 million.” 去年 10 月，eSafety 曾警告称，已准备好“在适当情况下动用其全部执法权力”，以制止 Roblox 上的诱骗和剥削行为，包括“寻求最高 4950 万美元的罚款”。

Roblox seems confident in its age-estimation system, though. In a blog post earlier this month, Roblox shared that its Facial Age Estimation system—which was built “completely in-house”—uses artificial intelligence to keep “age checks current.” The system so far has “processed 338 million age-check records to help Roblox users unlock age-appropriate chat and access age-appropriate games on the platform,” Roblox reported. 不过，Roblox 对其年龄估算系统似乎充满信心。在本月早些时候的一篇博客文章中，Roblox 分享称其“完全内部开发”的面部年龄估算系统利用人工智能来保持“年龄检查的实时性”。据 Roblox 报告，该系统迄今已“处理了 3.38 亿条年龄检查记录，以帮助 Roblox 用户解锁适合其年龄的聊天功能并访问适合其年龄的游戏”。

It relies on “a high-throughput” machine learning (ML) “layer that evaluates whether an account’s ongoing behavior still matches its estimated age over time.” Although age estimation with ML is “difficult” because “age boundaries are not behavioral cliffs,” Roblox says it is using the “right signals” to estimate age. But the platform hedged a bit when discussing how it sorts users into age bands, noting that “a single accuracy number is not very meaningful” because quality also depends on “ranking quality, calibr…” 该系统依赖于“一个高吞吐量的”机器学习（ML）“层，用于评估账户的持续行为是否随时间推移仍与其估算的年龄相符”。尽管利用机器学习进行年龄估算很“困难”，因为“年龄界限并非行为上的断崖”，但 Roblox 表示正在使用“正确的信号”来估算年龄。不过，该平台在讨论如何将用户划分为年龄段时有所保留，指出“单一的准确率数字意义不大”，因为质量还取决于“排名质量、校准……”