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BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil is beginning to map out, step by step, how it plans to enforce one of its newest online safety laws—and the roadmap is already taking shape.
The country’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) on Friday released a timeline detailing how it will monitor and enforce age verification requirements under the Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (Digital ECA), which came into force earlier this week.
Earlier reporting noted that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree on Wednesday establishing guidelines for regulations that will require adult websites to verify the ages of users in Brazil. The rules go beyond simple self-declaration and apply no matter where a site is based. They also extend to marketplaces and delivery apps offering adult or erotic goods and services, which must verify buyers’ ages and prevent minors from accessing those offerings.
Friday’s statement from the ANPD begins to answer the practical question many operators have been quietly asking: how, exactly, will this be enforced?
The agency has broken the process into three stages.
Stage 1 is already underway. Alongside Friday’s release of preliminary guidance for adopting what the agency describes as reliable age verification methods, the ANPD plans to launch an informational webpage about the Digital ECA and begin monitoring how app stores and operating systems are handling age verification tools. In April, the agency will also open a public consultation to collect feedback aimed at refining how the law is interpreted and applied.
Stage 2, scheduled to begin in August, will move into more detailed territory. The ANPD plans to publish more specific guidelines and technical parameters for age verification systems, followed by what it calls an “adaptation and monitoring period” for implementation. Starting in November, updated regulations will outline how inspections will be carried out and how administrative sanctions may be applied. During this phase, oversight will expand to additional regulated entities—including adult websites and platforms—based on insights gathered during the consultation process and assessments of risk across services.
Stage 3, set to begin in January 2027, will shift the focus to active enforcement. The ANPD will carry out inspection actions to ensure compliance and continue refining its procedures for investigations, regulatory oversight, and the application of penalties where violations are identified.
The agency also addressed early benchmarks for how age verification should be implemented, framing them as a way to provide “predictability and legal certainty” for platforms navigating the new requirements.
Those benchmarks echo approaches already seen in the United Kingdom and the European Union, emphasizing factors such as proportionality, accuracy, robustness, reliability, privacy protection and nondiscrimination.
More detailed, technical standards are expected to follow in future guidance, as regulators continue to shape how the law will operate in practice.
