Australian regulator says Roblox still hasn't fixed child safety risks

Australia's online safety regulator, eSafety, has found that Roblox has not resolved risks allowing adults to contact children on the platform, despite recent safety updates. The regulator has been examining whether Roblox complies with Australia's Online Safety Act, which requires sufficient measures to prevent contact between adults and children under 16.

While Roblox introduced some new safety features this year, eSafety's testing found the platform still put children at risk. Investigators found that adults could send connection requests to Australian children without consent from a parent or carer, and that children and adults could view and respond to each other's posts on forums outside of game environments without such consent.

The testing also found that children's lists of connections were visible to any platform user, as were children's profiles and biographical details — including account names, the number and names of their connections, avatar images, and non-sensitive personal information such as interests — with no way to restrict who could see this information.

Roblox pledges further changes

According to eSafety, Roblox believes it already meets its obligations under the Online Safety Act, but the company plans to introduce additional safeguards anyway. These include preventing adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent, making children's account settings private by default, adding accessible reporting tools that notify users of complaint outcomes, and hiring an independent third-party auditor to evaluate the effectiveness of its safety measures, including its age-estimation systems.

Roblox did not respond to a request for comment. The company is separately facing scrutiny in the United States, including an investigation by a US Senate subcommittee and lawsuits from multiple states over alleged child safety failures, some of which it has already settled. Earlier this year, Roblox also introduced two new account types for younger users that limit access to certain games and chat features.