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.

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.”

Such requests did not trigger parental alerts, eSafety found, and bad actors could also search kids’ visible-to-anyone contact lists for more targets.

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Governments around the world are suddenly very keen on online age verification requirements. In some places, this takes the form of ID requirements to access adult content, but several US states have also focused on app stores. With these laws now going into effect, Google has announced an expansion of its beta Play Age Signals API, which it claims will allow developers to confirm user ages without impinging on privacy.

Google's system doesn't require an ID or selfie verification—it's connected to the company's existing Family Link app. The idea is that parents will set age ranges for their kids' managed accounts. For example, you might set a range like 16–17, allowing apps to tailor experiences and content for teenagers.

Google notes that the ranges are dynamic and may change as young users get older. So a kid who's 13 may be in the same app content bracket for a few years before hitting the next level. Parents have the option to set and share these ranges if they want that additional level of control over what their children can access in Google Play. However, it's not mandatory for child accounts—it's fully opt-in and can be turned off at any time.

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