3 ms·

What would strict age verification look like? I am not aware of any privacy-respecting way to verify age online.

• dathinab 4y ago
  Technically? Limited to Germany? ID cards, Resistency cards and Bank cards in Germany (to some degree inter-compatible (partly) the EU) have a function which can be used to indicate if someone is an adult, without handing out the name, card id or anything like that (through potentially the full birthday). Browsers could use that to provide an "is adult" (yes/no/unknown) API which doesn't provide any additional information (and should use need user permission for access). Which would not be hack-proof, but would be more strict and privacy preserving. Now AFIK such an approach would be a no-go for the US due to they having a very different situation around passports and similar. But in Germany especially if it also works with resistency card, bank cards including many non German EU versions of those this is much less of an problem. Now that I think about it you probably could make such an API work in a hackable but more strict and good enough way in most western countries. E.g. you could use other less privacy conversing ways once for the browser to know (e.g. based on credit card number) and then just cache this information. The age proving provider would _not_ know about the usage (where, when, if at all, how often, etc.) and the site using it would just know 18+ yes/no/unknown. Through to be clear such a thing would only work if you want a "good enough but hackable" API. The moment you want to remove the "hackable" part things become a shot show involving certificates leaking hints about other private information, DRM, and other nonsense. But then any "real world" age checking is fairly hack-able too so IMHO hackable should be fine.