They see me scrollin', they hatin'

27:23Will Bain:Yeah, a bit of that tension come out of it. I remember you talking to us about that before as well. Well, hopefully, especially if you're out and about driving this morning, I know people jumping in the car, heading into work. Be kind to some of these people. It's not necessarily their choice, as Rachel has mentioned. Thanks as always for coming on the programme, Rachel. Really appreciate your time. No problem at all. Rachel King there, four-court manager at a chain of three petrol stations across Gloucestershire. 85058 for your thoughts, what you're seeing as well. I can see some of you texting in your petrol prices around you too right now.

27:50Will Bain:How big an impact has it had on your business, I guess, especially if you're perhaps self-employed? How big an impact has it had, that petrol price, and what would it mean if it does fall back down?

28:03Will Bain:0808599693 is the WhatsApp. Plenty more from Victoria and Charlie in the second half of the program. We're going to be talking about the social media ban and the tech that can implement it. We'll talk some Thames water. and we're also going to be hearing from Providence in Rhode Island, an unlikely beneficiary of a World Cup spending boom. We'll explain all in the second half of Wake Up. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Like those$5 roses at a gas station or a second-hand piece of technology that breaks in the first 10 minutes? Marketers know that feeling.

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29:58Will Bain:Wake up to money with Will Bade. Morning, welcome back to Wake Up To Money on Tuesday the 16th of June. Our panel this morning, Victoria Scholar, the Head of Investment at Interactive Investor, and Charlie Blakemore, the Chief Executive Officer at Intercity Technology, working in areas like cybersecurity, communications and managed IT services. New Wolves manager, as we're hearing there in the sport, and Sean's off for a week. You decide if that's a coincidence or not. Let's turn to one of the big stories from yesterday. we were building up to it Fliss was wasn't she on the program yesterday morning social media firms looking like they've been hitting back at that government proposal to ban under 16s from using their platforms Meta, YouTube, Snapchat all criticised the ban saying it will push teenagers towards more harmful platforms the row is doubtless going to keep going on between the tech companies and the government the key question though is how is it going to be implemented practically what are the technologies that can be used to help implement it.

31:01Will Bain:Robin Toombs is the chief executive and co-founder of the digital identity app. Yoti already provides age assurance services for the likes of Meta, TikTok, PlayStation, OpenAI, OnlyFans, and many others as well. Robin, morning. Thanks for being with us on the program. Good morning, Will. Perhaps before we come to your thoughts on all of this, if that's okay, why don't you talk us through a little bit how your tech works? I think it's interesting and kind of critical to all of this. Sure. Well, our three most popular age checks are our facial age estimation, where we effectively have trained an algorithm with lots of faces and true age.

31:42and that algorithm has basically looked at the patterns, so the pixels in the face, and has understood that lots and lots of different faces of different ages and it's worked out that, okay, certain patterns indicate certain ages and it's accurate to within about 5 % of people's ages.

32:04Will Bain:So people might have seen that one or used that one. You sort of look straight ahead, right, you look to the left, you look to the right. Is that sort of thing? Yeah, but that's actually a liveness test, but we do do a liveness test as part of that facial age estimation to ensure that somebody isn't holding up a picture or a face of their dad on a screen to try and spoof the system. Carry on with some of the others, yeah. Yeah, we've done about 1.2 billion of those facial age estimation checks. The second is our digital identity app, Yoti, which has been downloaded 8 million times by UK individuals.

32:39and that's where you use an ID document and your face so that you match your face to the picture of yourself on the document. And once you've done that once, you don't need to basically use your document again. It's a reusable app and we obviously know from your date of birth that you are, e.g., over 18 or over 16 and you can just share that over 18 anonymous attribute with a business without having to do another ID document check. And then the third is effectively the one-time only ID document check where you do that process, but you have to do it each time you're interacting with a new site that needs to age check you.

33:23Will Bain:So that's a good setup, isn't it? Because it suggests that this is being used quite widely and has been being used quite widely for what? For some time now? Yes, we started facial age estimation age checks back in 2018. And for a few years, we were the only company that did those facial age estimation checks. And lots and lots of businesses, you mentioned some of them, most of the big vaping companies, social media companies, gaming companies, some dating companies, and lots of other sectors, including adult pornography, use our site to basically or use our services to check age. And the key thing is they very rarely need to ask for identity information.

34:10Most individuals choose facial age estimation because you don't have to identify yourself with your credit card or your documents to prove that you're over 18.

34:21Will Bain:Interesting. And then effectiveness, I guess, is the other thing I'm sure people will be having questions about. Presumably at points, it can go wrong, right? But what's the sort of success rate? Yes, success-wise, you do get naughty people who may have a fake ID document. And obviously, we check for that. And most of the time, nobody can ever promise that they get things 100 % correct. But most fake documents we will spot. And people, obviously, as I explained, try and beat the liveness. So they may use a picture of their parent or somebody else who's an adult off the web. But there are independent tests at liveness.

35:04About 100 vendors have passed what they call Level 1 I-Beta, which is a US kind of approved testing agency. About 60 have passed Level 2 I-Beta, which means that they basically spot most attacks. And Yoti was the first company to pass I-Beta Level 3, which effectively means an expert has spent, or several experts have spent over a month trying to beat our system with a decent budget and clever tools to try and beat our system, and they weren't able to beat it.

35:44Will Bain:So I suppose that's been one of the big questions in the last 24 hours, hasn't it, Robin, about how practically you implement this. Actually, it sounds like there are tools out there already, right, that presumably the emphasis is on the companies to be using these, but that could be used to do some of this? Yes, there's been a lot of noise that this is going to be a disaster for identity and privacy. There'll be surveillance in a police state, but actually checks have been going on for a long time in the gambling sector. They've been going on for 20 years. In many sectors, as I explained, they've been going on for several years.

36:27and, you know, literally hundreds of millions of people have already done these types of checks.

36:33Will Bain:Yeah, I know someone who works in kind of recruitment in hospitality who uses your services, for example, as well, making sure people are old enough to work in bars and all that kind of stuff. That's right, and I think some journalists have, you know, very much focused on, you know, the kind of worries over privacy and that, you know, this is a kind of doom and gloom scenario, but actually lots and lots of people already do these checks and ministers don't tend to mention that, but this isn't new technology. It's been fairly mature for the last few years. And where does the data go then? Is it held somewhere or does it disappear sort of as soon as it...

37:13Will Bain:Because presumably it's got to be held, right, if someone doesn't have to do it over and over again. So if I come to both of the most popular two checks, Facial age estimation, as soon as we've captured the face and run the liveness, we actually run it in something called memory, which means we don't store that image to disk, to a hard drive. We actually run the check in memory, and then we run the facial age estimation in memory, and then we don't save the image to disk. So effectively, we delete it instantly, and then pass the age over to the website to let somebody know that they are over 18 or not or that they're estimated to be 16.

37:58So all of those 1.2 billion facial age estimations have been immediately deleted. And that's partly because of our commitment to privacy and it's partly we don't actually know what the real age of that person is. We're estimating it. So we couldn't use any information from that to basically try and train because you have to know the actual ground truth if you were wanting to then put that into your model to basically train. And we haven't got the consent from somebody to do that. And we've never done that since we went live.

38:33Will Bain:Will we need rules then to do that? Are you doing that voluntarily? Will we need rules to stop perhaps other players who would like to potentially monetize some of that perhaps as well coming into that space doing that, do you think? Will we need guardrails or are there existing ones that are? No, you'll definitely need rules. You know, there are companies who've said to us that they think that was, you know, not what they would have liked to have done, they'd like to have trained on that kind of information, but we decided in 2018 for privacy that we wouldn't, you know, keep those images and that's ensured that we're trusted by lots of the biggest companies around the world.

39:15But there will need to be rules

39:17Will Bain:because otherwise people will break the rules. I want to bring the guys in if I can, Charlie, particularly given this is very much kind of adjacent to your field. What do you make of the whole kind of debate, I suppose, and the fight back to it? Yeah, I think it's a good thing. I think that helping children out of an addictive environment that has proven to be quite damaging for many is a good step. I think as well, though, you know, technology can be a real force for good. So it's always a balance and it's making sure that children do have access to the digital world from a young age, but in a very different and more safe environment and secure environment.

40:02And it's going to be interesting now to see how this evolves. But I think, as Robin said, I think there's got to be a bit more of a, it will, without doubt, have to be a layered approach from the governance around this and setting of standards. But working with tech companies to design their platforms in a less addictive way for children to, you know, and also then the monitoring and management of the situation as the legislation changes. So there will always be ways to get around it. But I think it's a good thing. And, you know, I think we need to take both. Well, take technology companies on the journey, take parents on the journey and also children and, you know, awareness of how technology can be a force for good.

40:54But equally, make people more and children especially more aware of the dangers of the digital world. And I think sometimes that technology outpaces regulation. And I think this is probably a good example. So there are lots of layers, I think, that that we can put in to make it a more safe environment for children in this digital world. But I think it's a great thing to recognise that there's a lot of risk associated with just sort of, you know, a sort of open play with the digital environment and especially with the social media sites that are quite addictive for children. and time on screens has grown massively over the last sort of decade.

41:46And so, yeah, I think a multi-layered approach, and I think it will take time, but I generally think it's a really good thing.

41:53Will Bain:Robin, Charlie raised a couple of really interesting things. Just having tech like yours and a ban from the government doesn't actually solve all of the problems, that there is other work that's got to go on alongside it. yes definitely um you know there needs to be education for people to be more aware of you know some of the risks of um accessing certain types of content and um you know nobody thinks that age checks alone is the only tool in the toolbox that you need i think it is in interesting in the social media space that a lot of the social media companies have a a lot of different signals to understand whether somebody is a particular age.

42:36Obviously, most children are interacting online with their friends who are of a similar age. So, if a child was to claim they were, for instance, 20 when actually they're 12 or 13, there are, you know, signals, there are contra indicators that suggest that they haven't told the truth about their age. So I think that's one thing. And then secondly, you know, if you think about it, you don't have to have a perfect age-checking kind of situation. If most of my friends are no longer on social media because they are failing those checks, because they are underage, even if I were to beat the check, you know, sometimes most of my friends are not going to be on that site.

43:22so you're likely to then go and interact with your friends on another site whether that be a messaging site or just another site where the government doesn't deem that it needs to have the same kind of restriction until 16.

43:36Will Bain:Victoria, where do you sit on the whole debate?

43:44Will Bain:Have we got your line there, Victoria? No, we seem to be struggling with Victoria's line. I'll put this to you, Robin, if that's all right. We had a text, quite a long text from Bertie, but really the essence of it is that he's concerned about, doesn't live with his son. His son is under 16, uses a lot of these apps to communicate and chat and have fun and try and have sort of a relationship with him, even though they're not living together. There are sort of circumstances like that, aren't there, where it feels like poor behaviour by a chunk of people is impacting people who are using it for all the reasons that it was kind of that it's kind of changed the world and was there in the first place.

44:25yeah i think that's true um but i think you know the government's not um stopping under 16s from interacting with each other or other family members um they're concerned about you know certain um you know brands who effectively may or may not be um you know complying with all of the the um you know kind of rules that they would like to so there's effectively still going to be lots of places where children can interact with each other and with their families and uh

44:55Will Bain:you know friends and we've had a couple of texts in um eddie and hitching with one of them um uh robin asking about biometrics and uh why not have our fingerprint for id etc i mean i'm guessing some of your tech is kind of sort of taking some of that stuff right from people's eyes and things like that yeah we um yeah we don't look at people's rsss but we we certainly use biometrics which is obviously the unique characteristics of an individual. So we use the face to ensure that we can either identify somebody who's effectively coming into the Yoti app, for instance, for that first time, so matching their face to their ID document.

45:37Otherwise, you can't get confidence that it is the person who's claiming to be who they are. And then we will authenticate so that somebody can't look over somebody's shoulder spot their pin and then try and you know pretend to be them with their yoti app on their phone and then the key thing about facial age estimation is that there's no facial recognition at all like the the model has never been trained that um you know a person is a particular person it just basically says here is a human face and there is a month and year and the model basically just looks at the patterns so it doesn't have any concept of gender it doesn't have any concept of should i be trying to understand whether this is a particular person or not it just basically looks at the patterns in the face and gives a pretty accurate assessment of how old that person is

46:34Will Bain:robin thanks for talking us through it all this morning really um uh really interesting to hear your explanations of of how it all works thanks so much for your time thank you robin tooms there the chief executive and co-founder of the digital ID app. Yoti, Victoria, I think we've got rid of the gremlins on your line. Sorry about that. We'll turn away from social media, though, because this story is broken overnight. Michael Race, our colleague at BBC Online, talking about Thameswater. Doesn't sound like the government like what the company's put forward as its potential rescue plan. This has been a major saga.

47:07Will Bain:Feels like we're coming towards the endgame of it now, though. Yes, that's right. Right, so a multi-year saga for Thames Water. And it looks like the government is objecting to this£10 billion proposed package by lenders because it doesn't do enough to protect consumers or the environment. The deal would allow Thames Water to avoid any new fines for four years in exchange for a cash injection. But it does mean at the moment that if this deal doesn't go through, then it could be closer to nationalisation. But I think the government wants to try and prioritise a private package or a market-based solution if it can.

47:43Will Bain:Yeah, the problem is a lot of those, and they've said publicly, haven't they, the likes of KKR, the private equity firm who were looking at this, have been put off by some of those. Well, they think the government being too stringent around, too inflexible around some of those issues. Yeah, and it's a tricky one because this is a company that has been dealing with a lot of issues from environmental failures and sewage pollutions, a huge debt pile, poor infrastructure, leaks, low investment, and those record fines last year, and some from Offort, some from the environmental agency. So I think that some think that the nationalisation route, at least temporarily, might be the best path because it would mean that perhaps the company can get back on its feet.

48:31But I think for now, a private solution will be prioritised.

48:35Will Bain:Yeah, sure. As the week moves on, Liana with you tomorrow, we'll be chatting more about that as it develops. I'm sure the Thames water story, obviously the biggest water provider in the UK and as Victoria says, been one of the kind of corporate sagas of the last few years as well. It's turned to something a bit more enjoyable though for the last few minutes of the programme because I'm sure you've probably seen the, well, my social media feed was certainly filled with them videos just like this one.

49:14Will Bain:Scottish football fans making quite an impression on Boston. That was Pipers leading a march from a park out to Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, where they pretty much took over that stadium. I'm sure you've seen the videos of that by now. A rousing rendition of Loch Lomond amongst other things sung. They've certainly made a big impact, you would think, on the hospitality businesses of Boston and the kind of wider Massachusetts, Foxborough area. But despite not hosting any games at all, the Rhode Island's capital, Providence, has also been seeing a boost. And Alana O 'Hara stayed up way into the night for us there.

49:53Will Bain:the director of Go Providence, which markets the city to visitors. Evening to you. Well, I think it's still actually early morning for you as well. Morning from us. It's early morning here, Will, but it's all right. I'm so glad. It's not every day that the BBC radio is calling us here in Rhode Island. I'm happy to be here. So you set yourselves up as sort of like an alternative venue for Scotland fans or Scotland fans found you. How did it work? They found us. And like you said, yeah, we're not hosting a single game. We're not an official host city, but it really feels like one that, That clip you played earlier sounds like the last four days here in Providence.

50:27But we've really been so happy to have the Tartan Army, the Providence Tartan Army is what they're calling themselves. But they found us on their own. They're resourceful and they're smart travelers. And it turns out what they've told us is they looked at the pricing in Boston and the distance to Foxborough where that Boston stadium is. And they said, OK, well, this place Providence is much closer. It's a 25-minute drive. The prices for hotels are much more reasonable. It's a smaller, more easy to navigate city. It's very walkable. And they said, let's make our little unofficial headquarters Providence.

51:03And that's what's happened. And it's turned into this huge experience for them and really for us too.

51:10Will Bain:And so obviously with the two games that they've got in Boston back to, well, in Foxborough, as you say, back to back, how many fans have you got in Providence at the moment? Well, so we don't have exact numbers, but I've heard everywhere from 5 ,000 to one of the fans the other day told the local news that it was 12 ,000. So somewhere between there. But you walk in the city and you believe it. And so how have you managed to sort of react to that, I suppose, given you weren't, you know, you didn't have that kind of official status and that official planning? Or were you planning, you know, to have events and have fan zones and things ready anyway?

51:44Yeah, we were kind of prepared for the unexpected. we've been working on this for nearly two years now with our partners in Boston, at Gillette, everyone statewide really. So we have activated our hotels, our transportation partners. We've worked with the local bars and restaurants to prepare them for what we always expected was going to be more fans and a really rowdy group.

52:09Will Bain:And we've got England, of course, playing at Gillette Stadium a little bit later on in the World Cup. Are you hoping to host some England fans soon? Absolutely. We invite them to come to Providence. We'd be happy to have them. It's really been a great moment for the city. And the fans here are loving it. They're loving Providence. We're glad to hear it. It has been fun to see people really enjoying themselves, finding out the work. I've done some brilliant videos of Dutch fans in Dallas as well going to that game there because the build-up, and you'll know this being in the tourism sector, Alana, has been dominated certainly here in Europe about the cost, So not just of the tickets, but of the hotels, of the transport, the difficulties with transport.

52:51Will Bain:Has that made the buildup stressful for you? Do you think there were things that got wrong perhaps? It has, you know, been a bit stressful dealing with all of the different factors, truly. I mean, the prices for fans coming from overseas here. But I think that, for example, what the Tartan Army did was one of the ways around it. They chartered their own school buses to get around that$95 bus trip cost to the stadium, and they chartered buses. And they said that they spent$16 ,000 on beer instead for the buses. So they did it right. I think that they found a way to maximize their time here in Providence for this visit to the states, and they made it work.

53:36But, yeah, you know, I think there have been challenges along the way. But when you look at the city this week, you wouldn't know it.

53:43Will Bain:And what are people doing? What should people come and see if they are indeed still coming or still arriving before that next Scotland game and the England game as well? Well, I will say one of the best moments so far has been seeing all the Scottish fans at Waterfire, which is our signature event here in the city. But if they're coming to Providence, definitely come for the food, come for the art and the history, come for the riverboat tours. One of the Tartan Army groups chartered our 55-plus passenger boat around the harbour. They're taking advantage of being on the water, the seafood, all of the fun stuff to do, but definitely don't miss the food here in Rhode Island.

54:23Will Bain:And be honest, because we're live on Radio Scotland as well as Five Live here in the UK, Alana. Have you got used to the sound of pipes yet? Oh, absolutely. I hear it in my sleep. That and No Scotland, No Party. I don't know if that's a good thing. No, we've loved it No Scotland, No Party That's the song that you're going to take with you Absolutely I didn't know what it meant until they came And now I'll never forget it Well, great stuff Thank you so much for speaking to us Very early in the morning, your time We really appreciate it Absolutely, thanks for having me Alana O 'Hare there, the director of Go Providence Big thanks to Charlie Blakemore Chief Executive at Intercity Technology To Victoria Scholar as well From Interactive Investor who've been our panel here this morning.

55:06Will Bain:And of course, a big thanks as always to all of you for listening to us here on Wake Up To Money. Wake Up To Money from BBC5 Live.

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