Roblox commits to privacy changes after eSafety finds adult-child contact issues

eSafety Investigation Findings

Australia's eSafety commissioner discovered that adults on the Roblox platform could still view child accounts and send connection requests without parental consent. Testing also revealed that children and adults could see and respond to each other's posts on forums outside of game environments. Additionally, children's connections and profiles, including account names and interests, were visible to all users.

Previous Safety Measures

In December of the previous year, Roblox introduced changes to limit interactions between children and adults on the platform. These updates included making accounts for users under 16 private by default and providing tools to prevent adult users from contacting under-16s without parental consent. Direct chat was also disabled by default until age estimation was completed, and parental controls could disable chat for 13- to 15-year-olds, with voice chat restricted for this age group and younger.

Roblox's Commitments

Following discussions with eSafety, Roblox has committed to further changes. These include preventing adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent and strengthening child account settings to be private by default. Roblox will also engage a third-party auditor to evaluate its safety measures, including its age-estimation technology. The company has three months to implement these changes, with eSafety warning of potential federal court action if the undertaking is breached.

Impact and Context

The eSafety commissioner had raised concerns that Roblox might not comply with codes and standards under the Online Safety Act, citing insufficient measures to prevent contact between adults and children. Approximately 1.7 million Australian children use Roblox. This commitment from Roblox addresses these regulatory concerns and aims to enhance child safety on the platform.