Kollam: Child-safety technologist Stephen Antony Venansious has cautioned that emerging child-protection laws could expose minors to new risks by demanding intrusive age-verification and personal data collection.

“If we ask a child to surrender their face or identity just to play or learn online, we have already failed them,” he said, saying that safety measures must not come at the cost of children’s privacy.

Venansious has developed a system that detects grooming and abusive behaviour through on-device analysis rather than biometric checks or centralised data storage.

Offered as an Application Programming Interface for gaming, education and social media platforms, the tool identifies risky interactions without collecting photographs, identity documents or other sensitive information

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