Roblox To Overhaul Privacy Rules After eSafety Violations: What Parents Need to Know
Parents should not have to become cybersecurity experts before letting their children play Roblox. Over the past year, the platform has introduced age checks, parental controls, private accounts, and age-based restrictions on experiences to keep younger players from talking to unknown adults. On paper, that sounds like a fairly substantial fence around its most vulnerable users. The trouble is, that fence still has a few gates left wide open. Roblox is filled with profiles, connection requests, forums, and other social features that can be just as important to an experience as playing the actual game, with some creators saying the limits have harmed the word-of-mouth sharing for their games. A recent test by an Australian regulator found several spaces that still left children visible and reachable without a parent ever signing off on the interaction. Now, Roblox has agreed to another round of major safety changes, but this time the company will not be left to grade its own homework.
Australia’s online safety regulator is giving Roblox three months to close those gaps. According to The Guardian, the country’s eSafety commissioner found that adults could still view child accounts and send them connection requests without parental consent. Children and adults could also see and respond to one another’s forum posts outside games, while younger players’ account names, interests, profiles, and connections remained visible. Roblox has now entered into a legally enforceable agreement requiring it to prevent unknown adults from contacting children without parental approval and to make child accounts private by default. The company must also hire an independent auditor to examine whether protections are being put in place and are effective, including a review of its age-estimation technology. If Roblox fails to honor the agreement, the commission can ask Australia’s Federal Court to order the company to comply.
Roblox is Under Scrutiny Down Under
The Australian investigators’ findings are particularly troubling for Roblox, which has been working to resolve the child-safety issues for quite some time. Last year, the company introduced a set of policies that were meant to curb the unsolicited interactions between kids and adults on the platform. Accounts belonging to players under 16 were supposed to become private by default, while direct chat required an age estimation be performed. The Australian test suggests those measures did not meet the moment, allowing large holes to form in the safety net. Roblox appears to be trying to get ahead of the growing scrutiny as well. On August 19th, the company released three of its safety tools online as open-source models, including technology designed to flag attempts to share personal information, detect potentially dangerous conversations, and identify voice-chat violations. Sharing those tools could help make other online platforms safer, but regulators are clearly looking for proof that Roblox‘s protections work consistently in its own ecosystem first.
Australia is not the only government putting Roblox under a microscope. In the United States, Senators Josh Hawley and Dick Durbin have launched their own congressional investigation into child safety on Roblox, demanding records related to abuse and the financial exploitation of young players while warning, “Congress will not look the other way.” Roblox was previously given an exemption from Australia’s under-16 social-media ban because gaming remains its primary purpose, though eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has not ruled out revisiting that exemption if its social features keep becoming a bigger draw. That distinction matters less to parents than whether they can trust their child is safe on the platform. Roblox can add more controls, classifiers, and age checks, but the next three months will test whether all those tools can finally keep underage players out of “stranger danger.”
