21 ms·

I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

• titaniumrain 8mo ago
  most websites know exactly who you are, who you live with, and what things you like. profiling is not just a luxury enjoyed by government
• jjgreen 9mo ago
  This guy is reading my mind ...
• alansaber 9mo ago
  It doesn't help that it feels like poorly veiled information mining, not genuine policy.
• lkuty 9mo ago
  This is exactly what I am feeling (the title, didn't read). I can't see why I would give a copy of my official id card or a picture of my face to a basic service on the Internet. Seriously ? They do not deserve it. Even my phone number is too much but well Google has it now.
  • croes 9mo ago
    Luckily it’s already possible to verify your age without actually giving out any data like your birthdate
    • LoganDark 9mo ago
      Not to a service that only accepts such data as proof.
      • jermaustin1 9mo ago
        Steam thinks I was born Jan 1, 1970. Not that I needed to lie when I did my age verification back 15 years ago, I just randomly scrolled the year down and selected one. As the years have marched on, though, that "birthdate" becomes significantly closer to my real birthday.
        • adithyassekhar 9mo ago
          > As the years have marched on, though, that "birthdate" becomes significantly closer to my real birthday. I understand there's a clever phrasing here but I didn't get it. English is only my second language.
          • jjgreen 9mo ago
            When you're 10, a year is a long time, when you're 60 it is not. There's an implicit "relatively" here, which is unusual but not unknown in English. Almost poetic, I like it.
            • adithyassekhar 9mo ago
              Thanks now I understand. I am "only" 26, but I remember being 20 like yesterday. I can't believe I'm on the second half of the way to 50. COVID lockdowns and responsibilities didn't help. I feel time has gone faster since I got a job, if that makes sense. Every day yearning for it to be 5o clock so I can check out, every week yearning for the weekend, every month yearning for the last day to get paid. Doing this is just asking for time to be over sooner.
          • Barbing 9mo ago
            When a 10-year-old registers for an adult website, they pretend they're 100 years old. Their age is 90 years different from the stated birthday. Eighty years later, the birth date is just as far off—but the implied age is now only 10 years off.
            • adithyassekhar 9mo ago
    • _heimdall 9mo ago
      And without having to trust that the government isn't keeping track of every request for age verification? I'd be curious how that might work as I haven't yet seen a zero-trust age verification system.
      • raron 9mo ago
        The age verification proposal of the EU tries to do that, the government knows you used age verification (and I think the rough number of times you used it), but they don't know when or where you used it. https://ageverification.dev/av-doc-technical-specification/docs/annexes/annex-B/annex-B-zkp/ https://ageverification.dev/av-doc-technical-specification/d...
        • raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
          The EU passing a law about the internet? What could possibly go wrong?
          • jim33442 9mo ago
            Please drink verification can to verify that you have verified your cookie preferences
        • _heimdall 9mo ago
          I can't imagine countries with such strict speech laws, for example, would be willing to build a system that is technically incapable of linking the person visiting a sire and the site requesting verification. This proposal may have been updated since I read it previously, so I could be wrong now, but it didn't read as a true zero-knowledge proof as key steps in the flow still required a level of trusting the government as the central authority to do the right thing and not track requests, both today and in the future.
          • croes 9mo ago
            The EU has more freedom of speech than the US, the US has just a different way of punishment. It’s much easier in the US to lose your job for what you say as in the EU and in the US the consequences of losing your job are more severe if you don’t have enough money so you can afford to lose it. US freedom of speech comes with a price tag that puts the censor inside your brain.
  • reddalo 9mo ago
    Givin a copy of your ID card to a website? Damn. In my times, we didn't even use to provide our _real name_ to websites.
    • thewebguyd 9mo ago
      In fact, it was strongly recommended not to give out your real name on the internet. I'll stand by my opinion that deeply integrating the internet into our daily lives instead of keeping as a "place you go" was a huge mistake.
• amoe_ 9mo ago
  The problem for me is not services where the content is online, you can just avoid those, but cases where access to scarce real resources is controlled through online verification. E.g. renting recording studios, background checks for job applications, things like this. Often there is no route that does not go through a third-party verification service.
  • inanutshellus 9mo ago
    I gave a bunch of details of my personal history to a verification service thinking naively that it would be used to prove I was me. Instead, they didn't know much about me apparently and just stored what I told them. Then it appears they were hacked because some completely unrelated release of stolen data included all my data, specifically all that data I had provided to that service, that one time. The Verification Service is the honeypot for your private information. Arg.
• bArray 9mo ago
  I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback. I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entirely to avoid some weird dark-pattern cookie trickery. I don't like the idea of any particular service getting more information than they should. Siting there I realized, we were not the real target. It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept, enter any details asked of them, and to not value their personal data. Sadly, the damage is already done.
  • PyWoody 9mo ago
    I remember when it first became widely known that the government could see your library checkouts. People protested. It was a big deal in my tiny town. I don't even think it would be even a blip on the radar now. It really is depressing how much ground we've given.
    • chneu 9mo ago
      I was just talking about this the other day. This all happened right after 9/11(nevr 4get) and people were fucking PISSED that the patriot act wanted to look at people's library histories. It was a HUGE deal where I lived. Now? Nobody gives a shit and people will trade away their valuable privacy for an IQ test.
      • huflungdung 9mo ago
        [dead]
    • Barbing 9mo ago
      USA PATRIOT Act, early 2000s?
    • 8organicbits 9mo ago
      Can you clarify what you mean? My local library is run by the county government, so of course the government can see the checkouts, they are the ones I check the book out from. But they restrict checkout information from others. For example, a parent can see the checkouts of their own children, but not after they turn 13. Perhaps you're talking about subpoenas? Checking some other libraries I see SF Public Library has some discussion about that, but they delete books from your checkout history once they are returned. https://sfpl.org/about-us/confidentiality-and-usa-patriot-act https://sfpl.org/about-us/confidentiality-and-usa-patriot-ac...
• cjfd 9mo ago
  There are some services where it makes sense. E.g., submitting taxes with the government, logging into the banking website. Apart from that kind of service, yes I don't think I would want my identity or age verified on more or less any website.
  • vincnetas 9mo ago
    the catch is that for both cases same backend provider is most likely used. persona for example. and you have no choice who will id your face.
    • SiempreViernes 9mo ago
      I mean, if you live in a country where the state will delegate ID verification to a creepy company instead of having that as an in house capability you have more pressing structural issues to deal with.
      • vincnetas 9mo ago
        ok, lets do a poll. id like to see who uses what. remember its not only countries its also private businesses like banks or lawyers and remember its like ratchet. there might be 99% of services that use inhouse face id, and its enough to have only one to leak your data.
        • SiempreViernes 9mo ago
          Ha! You are concerned about the privacy aspects of IDs but you want me to list what authentication services I use for you? That's too funny to help out with :p
          • vincnetas 9mo ago
            i ment to list id services that are used by your services not services themselves. My data point is persona.
• underdown 9mo ago
  It’s a hand out to advertisers losing uuids.
• adzm 9mo ago
  I use multiple "real" identities so I don't have my real name associated with certain open source projects that involve sensitive things like cryptography etc. This is a huge concern of mine.
  • xerox13ster 9mo ago
    I have multiple “real identities”, diagnosed due to trauma. We each want to have our own spaces of interest and experience online. As a matter of mental health, we really cannot have these overlapping for many reasons, prime among them is that if one part of me becomes aware of another while they’re doing their thing, a mental “table join” can happen and disturbing memories can be shared which is incredibly destabilizing to the system. As a wireframe example my programming alter cannot be exposed to the alter who browses cptsd forums or they remember things that cause them to dip from the headspace and we lose their knowledge. We can’t try to pretend we don’t exist and pretend to be one person either, we did that for years and we ended up having a breakdown and went into a fugue state and moved across country leaving everything behind. This law would destroy our productivity and contribution to economy or whatever corporacrats care about.
• vincnetas 9mo ago
  yeah, but wait till you have to id yourself to use online governments service, or do a one hour drive to meet in person with officials. and then if you have to do this four times. i gave up and submited my face to save 8+ hours and inevitably most of people will do the same...
• nvarsj 9mo ago
  Honestly seems like the moral panic of the day. I was just reading about some “red vs blue” school meme in London which led to a lot of hand wringing and parents keeping their kids at home. The kicker? There was no actually school battles, it was a viral meme (mostly consumed by adults) and the kids just thought it was a joke. Pretty much sums up all modern discourse in banning social media and doing age checks. When I was growing up it was satanic symbols in the music I listened to. I guess - wtf is wrong with adults? Why do they feel compelled to control the younger generation?
  • tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
    >Why do they feel compelled to control the younger generation? Mental health issues in the young have gone through the roof since 2010. There is definitely a problem, whether this solves it is another matter.
• croes 9mo ago
  > I haven’t been asked to verify my age for a DVD purchase (online or offline) in a very long time. Offline there is a reason for that, online are enough countries where it breaks the law if you sell without verification at least for NC-17 titles
• OpenWaygate 9mo ago
  I live in China, where every mobile game requires age verification. Teenagers can play for up to 1.5h/d on weekends. But as far as I can see, some parents will assist their children to unlock more time on purpose.
  • SiempreViernes 9mo ago
    Handing over a phone is certainly cheaper than paying for extra childcare, though most likely much less healthy for the child. I suppose idea is that Chinese women will stay at home with the child so the state doesn't have to provide any help?
    • mothballed 9mo ago
      More like the state (at least in places like USA) cracked down on children roaming freely so now people hide their kids inside playing video games so a Karen doesn't call CPS when mommy has other things to do all day besides play helicopter parent staring down at their kid all day.
      • rd 9mo ago
        Is there any hard evidence that this is true compared to say 20 years ago. I’ve heard it repeated a million times but no one’s ever provided evidence
        • mothballed 9mo ago
          [ redacted ]
          • bpt3 9mo ago
            You live in a very strange area to say the least. None of those are true in my area, and how did the "Karen" even get to your child on your private road?
            • 9mo ago
• nonethewiser 9mo ago
  Enforcing laws against porn companies distributing porn to minors seems reasonable. It's already illegal many places, such as the US. It is then their responsibility to gate by age. It has always worked this way for liquor stores or basically anything else age-gated, including some online services like poker. If you dont want to provide age verification you don't have to.
  • mossTechnician 9mo ago
    There is a difference between a liquor store checking your ID, and a liquor store scanning your ID, appending it to a record of your purchase, and uploading it to a service to be processed by third parties (such as insurance companies, perhaps). (In the US, the latter occurs more often than you may expect.)
    • sanitycheck 9mo ago
      Well, and that service then inevitably being hacked and your ID being distributed and/or sold to miscreants online. I'm in the UK, I'm normally connected through a VPN these days.
    • philwelch 9mo ago
      It’s possible to build mechanisms for this. Not perfect or foolproof ones. Maybe your phone stores a digital ID for its owner and sets a cryptographically signed “IsAdult” header. If you pull the signing key from the phone you can spoof that, but you can bring a fake ID to the bar too. The problem is that the people who want age verification don’t really care about the technical details of how it’s implemented and the people who oppose age verification just want unfettered online pornography out of principle, so no one is actually thinking about how to implement age verification in a way that protects privacy.
  • mothballed 9mo ago
    You can absolutely buy for instance tobacco, cannabis by the pound ("CBD" but actually ~20+% THC[a]), explosives(tannerite), alcohol (wine), and guns (black powder, or perfectly functional cartridge pre-1898) completely legally online without ID check. It's really not a problem, which is why most people probably haven't heard of it being one or even realize all can legally be bought online without ID.
• etothet 9mo ago
  I encountered my first run-in with an age verification prompt when I went to authenticate into the Claude iOS app. It asked me to use me iOS/iCloud account to confirm myage. It was quick and seamless enough, but even though I'm aware of this trend, it struck me as a bit jarring.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• delaminator 9mo ago
  Steam was asking for your Age since day 1. 1 - 1 - 1970 is always mine - Unix zero
  • kps 9mo ago
    I too like to appear younger online.
• michaelt 9mo ago
  > I was pondering last night for which services I, personally, would actually be willing to verify my age or identity. > And… the answer is “none”. > At least, none that I can think of at the moment. Think back to the recent pandemic. Work? Online. School? Online. Recreational activities? Online. Talking to loved ones you don’t live with? Online. Birthday party? Online. Nonfood shopping? Online. Banking? Paying taxes and bills? Online. Job interview? Doctors appointment? Online. Dating? You guessed it, online. The internet’s a big thing these days.
  • JohnFen 9mo ago
    How true this is probably varies a whole lot from person to person. Very few of the things you list are things that I do primarily online (even during the pandemic), and none of those are things that I can only do online.
  • jim33442 9mo ago
    A lot of these don't have any legitimate reason for your ID. Banking and job sure, but those will ask for it offline too.
  • aaronmdjones 8mo ago
    > Work? Online. Presumably my place of employment would have already verified my identity when I started working for them. > School? Online. Ditto, and for kids enrolling during lockdown they wouldn't have any ID to hand over anyway. > Recreational activities? Online. > Talking to loved ones you don’t live with? Online. > Birthday party? Online. > Nonfood shopping? Online. Doesn't need me to verify my identity. > Banking? Every bank I've ever interacted with has done this verification in-person. > Paying taxes The government already knows who I am and what I look like (by issuing the ID to me); this is fine. > and bills? Direct debit just has a sort code, account number, and name on the account. No verification of identity. > Job interview? I wouldn't think that a new employer would be verifying your identity until you actually get the job offer? > Doctors appointment? Doesn't need me to verify my identity to arrange it. I have to go there in person anyway, I can damn well show them my ID then. > Dating? You guessed it, online. Eh. This one is a grey area. I can see the desire to have members verify who they are. I've also seen how badly that can go wrong.
• Springtime 9mo ago
  Related: this[1] current article/thread about privacy-preserving age verification. The author here seems to be commenting specifically on the type of anonymity-breaking age assurance widely being utilized along with the vaguely justified social media bans. Given the right technology to prove an age threshold but while preserving anonymity I'd be curious how their thoughts would change. For example, we've never seen people critiquing the naive kind of 'Are you over 18?' prompts seen on ye olde Reddit or adult sites, precisely because those weren't breaking anonymity or leaking any trackable identifiers. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229953
  • alias_neo 9mo ago
    I'm in the same boat as OP. The question I'd ask myself is; who would _I_ trust to implement privacy preserving verification? The only answer I can come up with right now is; myself. I would trust myself.
• rustyhancock 9mo ago
  The problem for me is that the reason this is needed is that kids are permanently online, completely unprepared for the wild west that is the internet and increasingly effectively raised by the internet. All this is to facilitate that lifestyle without any concerns that far more damage is likely to happen by allowing it to happen than insisting on adequate parenting
• JohnFen 9mo ago
  I'm of the same mind as the author. I can't think of a single online service that would be worth the risk of exposing myself to age or identity verification.
• d--b 9mo ago
  Age and identity verification can and should be done at the country level. France has an ID service to pay taxes, and they have a network of possible ID verification systems. Like, you can ID through the tax system, or through the healthcare system. It works fine. Implementing an API that uses the same to provide age verification is not rocket science. If you need age verification for a website, say "smedia.fr", then you go there, then it makes you get an age verification token to "franceid.gov.fr", that guy gives you back a token, you send the token to smedia.fr which checks the token with franceid.gov.fr I don't understand how this is even an issue.
  • arewethereyeta 9mo ago
    you should NOT need any face ID to pay taxes.
    • d--b 9mo ago
      whatever man. Everyone in France has an ID. It's no big deal, really.
      • arewethereyeta 9mo ago
        great argument, the "if you have nothing to hide what's the problem in sharing all your data" type
        • d--b 8mo ago
          I think you got me wrong. I was saying in France everyone has a photo id for government stuff. You pay taxes to the government so yeah you need some form of ID just for the government to know who’s paying the taxes. in the US you use social security number. it’s the same, but on a card and with a photo.
          • OkayPhysicist 8mo ago
            In the US you do not need an SSN to pay taxes. It makes it easier, and you can't claim a child without an SSN for the purposes of deductions, but you do not need an SSN.
• zippyman55 9mo ago
  This stuff worries me as one needs to be a hard target when they reach their 80 and 90’s. People do not need personal info out there in the public domain.
• tiffanyh 9mo ago
  Why does Claude require my phone number. It's honestly a reason why I don't use the service.
  • cedws 9mo ago
    Could be worse. OpenAI is asking for ID verification to use Codex 5.3, through Persona, which was just exposed as doing extremely dodgy surveillance stuff.
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
• sspiff 9mo ago
  I'm fine with providing my identity for online banking and other finance platforms for legal & taxation purposes. I can't think of a single other use case in which I'd be willing to verify my identity. I'd rather go back to hosting email myself, and am fine with circumventing content access control for all other platforms for personal use. We're seeing the world slide towards authoritarian strongmen, and we want to give them a massive index of who we are and what we do? I'd rather not.
  • chneu 9mo ago
    People trade away longevity for short term convenience. Then when that convenience is shown to be bad/unhealthy people refuse to give up that convenience. So many aspects of our lives are like this now. People just accept defeat cuz it would mean giving up one click ordering or free return shipping or they might have to look at labels to avoid bad companies.
    • p0w3n3d 9mo ago
      It's because people are too busy and distracted to understand and even listen to what dangers are heading towards them
      • Henchman21 9mo ago
        And this WILL CONTINUE until we choose to turn off and walk away from THE GREAT DISTRACTION MACHINE. We call it “social media”.
  • SiempreViernes 9mo ago
    Honestly I think these age verification laws are blunt instruments responding to the decade of avoided moderation the big platforms have managed to pull off. I've run ad blockers for years now, but I'm still trying to forget those disgusting zit popping pictures that trended in ads for a while. Or those incredibly stupid life hack shorts, like the one where someone tied a cord around a mug and the hack to get it loose was smashing the cup... that crap made me despair for humanity as much as the Gaza genocide. But google and facebook convinced the legislators that it would be impossible to keep that chum away from kids on their platform, so the legislators are going with the next option: banning the kids from the platforms.
• numpad0 9mo ago
  See, I think, you're not supposed to continue using those services as before. They want them all gone, and so-called age verification is a means to chase away users that are less dedicated. What I think must result is, a monotonic cultural erosion and deprecation of such platforms and regions implementing those restrictions, and continuous replacement with engineered and packaged foreign imports from venues and regions from psychological "upstream" where there aren't such restrictions. But I guess that's what they explicitly desire.
• shadowgovt 9mo ago
  The most relevant question to answer for your jurisdiction is "What is the penalty for lying?" If none, you were born on March 5, 1957. (Note on evaluating this: there are some circumstances where the penalty changes later. I know one person who's Global Access paperwork was delayed because they lied to their airline's frequent flyer program about their age. But that was the whole consequence: a need to update their data with the airline).
  • bitwize 9mo ago
    Whenever Steam's web site asked me for my date of birth before allowing me to view a game trailer, I would punch in January 1, over 10 years after my actual date of birth (still well within grown-ass man territory because I'm geriatric in gamer years). Because they don't fucking need to know exactly when I was born. Only that I'm old enough.
• kccqzy 9mo ago
  We’ve had age verification for decades. It just depends on specifically what is being verified. Congress passed Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act back in 1998, that basically made it extremely tedious for websites to serve children under 13 years of age. How did everyone manage this in the early 2000s? Every child simply lied to the website with an incorrect birthdate. Now that was before real name policy was instituted by social networks and it was also common for people to provide a false name to websites. This approach of “asking the user for a birthdate and accepting it as true” is the only age verification method that’s sane.
• elorant 9mo ago
  Facebook recently flagged my account and asked for a video selfie and I decided that I'd rather leave that shithole than uploade biometric data.
• thenoblesunfish 9mo ago
  People don't like these checks. Ok. But. Parents worry about their kids being exposed to porn and social media. They want someone to do something about it. That political force is real, and someone is going to take advantage of it. What tools can they ask for if not these checks everyone agrees they hate? That's what I hope for in these types of comment threads.
  • Ylpertnodi 9mo ago
    > But. Parents worry about their kids being exposed to porn and social media. They want someone to do something about it. Someone, anyone, but themselves.
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  • a456463 9mo ago
    It's called parenting. Don't do ipad parenting then. We didn't get a SEGA console and cable TV was restricted to only 2 hours. It was fine. It was fun. The only thing I wish for from my child is more time with friends not more screen time.
• economistbob 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • advisedwang 9mo ago
    Ah yes, Jews control the world, nefariously plotting to undermine good people. Never heard that before
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
• jacquesm 9mo ago
  As you should be. I so far have not verified my age for anything, if that becomes a requirement I just bow out.
• fusslo 9mo ago
  Personally, I can see use cases for verifying my identity: Banking, taxes, treasurydirect, linkedin, docusign, online filing, Right now all those are tied to my gmail account. So I'm feeding google all this juicy (IMO) confidential information. What happens when I get locked out by google's automatic systems? I already lost my first gmail account from like 2003, when you had to get an invite to sign up. I'm stuck in a verification loop that emails a yahoo email that no longer exists. Impossible to get a real person to look at it. If I can just verify that I am who I say I am without an email account... That'd be worth it. Of course that just shifts the burden to the identity verification company rather than an email company. But verifying my age? I see no purpose other than a backdoor for mass identity verification. keeping lists of people and what they're accessing. Buying alcohol online still requires the person accepting the package to be over 21. Buying firearms online still requires being shipped to an FFL. I already despise how much information my ISP has about what I see, what I access, and when.
  • skeptic_ai 9mo ago
    You lost your account and you still back to Gmail? Impressive
    • crazygringo 9mo ago
      Google didn't do anything wrong, they lost their Yahoo and it was the only way they had of verifying their older Gmail. What do you expect, when you don't have access to your recovery method, and it's a free service so it's not like you can prove ownership of a credit card previously used for billing or something? And especially since that was presumably from before the days when Gmail required a phone number, so your recovery e-mail was the only mechanism, and things like 2FA authentication codes didn't exist.
      • skeptic_ai 8mo ago
        Fair enough. Made a mistake to assume anything
• CommieBobDole 9mo ago
  When thinking about verifying your identity with a service, you have to ask yourself "what will be the impact to me if everything this service knows about me, every click I've made, everything I've watched/read/uploaded is posted publicly on the internet, attached to my full name, address and photo?". Because those are the very real stakes; if you verify with enough services, this will happen to you. Weigh that against the value of using the service. A lot of times that will still probably come out in favor of using the service. Sometimes, especially given the kind of services that want age verification, the potential cost is such that you would be insane to verify.
  • Barbing 9mo ago
    Price discrimination comes to mind. What else? (“what will be the impact to me”)
    • a456463 9mo ago
      Rental discrimination, what you can buy, or where you can live, the whole social credit system
• jagermo 9mo ago
  I will never tell my real age if possible. I especially love free forms for entry, because then I can be born in the 1800s. Surprisingly few services have an issue with that.
• cableshaft 9mo ago
  I have a date I use that's incorrect, but consistent so I can remember it if I need to, that I use for age verification for anything that doesn't truly need an accurate birthdate (example, age verification to view games on Steam). It's roughly the same age as mine, but if someone tried to pass themselves off as me with that birthdate, they wouldn't succeed. These companies are mostly just verifying I'm an adult anyway, and I am legit that. But yeah, I don't like just giving the actual date everywhere as it can potentially be used for identity theft.
• mirzap 9mo ago
  And you shouldn’t verify. Many companies offering these identity verification services have ties to the intelligence networks of a country that shall not be named (similar to most VPN services that are supposedly there to protect your anonymity).
  • smallstepforman 9mo ago
    No Such Agency is the biggest government data collection agency, why not name the hosting country?
    • a456463 9mo ago
      yoU Said it All
• fauigerzigerk 9mo ago
  I don't have a problem with verifying that I am an adult as long as I don't have to provide information that makes it easy to track down my identity. The UK government has approved 7 age verification methods. Not one of them meets that standard. That's not an accident. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/age-checks-for-online-safety--what-you-need-to-know-as-a-user https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/a...
  • strangecasts 9mo ago
    It drives me a little bonkers that the UK already tried implementing age verification in 2019, with an approach that would have been easy to make verifiably anonymous: buying a single-use code from a newsagent who checks your age with ID [1], but can't connect the code to you specifically That attempt officially failed because the UK failed to inform the EU about it, but I suspect it was also much harder to sell people on having to buy "porn passes" than on "just" kicking kids off phones [1] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/oct/16/uk-drops-plans-for-online-pornography-age-verification-system https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/oct/16/uk-drops-pla...
• NGRhodes 9mo ago
  One thing people underestimate is how brittle digital identity actually is in the UK. There isnt a single identity. Theres a loose federation of databases (banks, CRAs, telecoms, electoral roll, etc.). There are multiple operational definitions of "name": legal name, common name, known-as name, card name, account display name. None is universally canonical. Theres no statutory hierarchy that forces institutions to agree on precedence. In the absence of a mandatory national ID, identification relies on matching across name, date of birth, and address history, which are inconsistently collected. Fuzziness is necessary for coverage, but it introduces brittleness. If a variant isnt explicitly linked as an alias, automated online checks can fail because the matching rules dont explore every permutation. Even within a single dataset the problem doesnt disappear. Large systems such as the NHS have documented identification errors involving patients with identical names, twins at the same address, or demographic overlaps. Unique identifiers help, but operational workflows still depend on humans entering and reconciling imperfect data. https://digital.nhs.uk/services/personal-demographics-service/national-back-office-for-the-personal-demographics-service/data-quality-incidents/duplicate-registration-case-study https://digital.nhs.uk/services/personal-demographics-servic...
  • Vohlenzer 9mo ago
    Splink is a notable endeavor in this regard from the MoJ. https://github.com/moj-analytical-services/splink https://github.com/moj-analytical-services/splink.
• throw7 9mo ago
  Stop making your kids my fucking problem/annoyance. Some company or, hell, the gov't setup a proxy service that whitelists the internet and have your kid use that. Do your fucking job.
• uyzstvqs 9mo ago
  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The standard should be that devices ask whether the user is a minor during setup, and make that available as an is_minor boolean to all apps and websites. Children's devices are almost always set up by parents, and the setting can be protected by a parental PIN code. This method is effective while being completely private and local. Though I can't take credit for the idea. It was proposed by the European Democratic Party.[0] [0] https://democrats.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Protecting-Children-without-the-privacy-nightmare-of-Digital-IDs-2.pdf https://democrats.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Protecting-C...
  • renjimen 9mo ago
    It's only effective if "Children's devices are almost always set up by parents", which is a big assumption. My parents were about as tech savvy as you could reasonably expect but I still got away with buying R-rated video games and such. Kids are persistent and the dangers aren't always obvious.
    • cubefox 9mo ago
      The question is whether parents should bear this responsibility or the state.
      • renjimen 8mo ago
        Both. The same as for other materials we don't want kids to access, like alcohol. We can't expect parents to always be watching their kids. That's not how societies have ever worked. But what I'm actually questioning in my comment above is effectiveness of the technology solution proposed at the device level.
        • hellojesus 8mo ago
          It's effective insofar as the parents secure the device. If it's a general purpose computer, and the parent forgets to lock the bios, kids will just live boot into Ubuntu or some other OS and do as they please. Or they may install keyloggers (including hardware loggers) to get the parents' password and then go update their account. Certainly this may help hinder them, but it won't take long for them to learn the basics of curcumvention, and the cost is regulated speech for OS manufacturers.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• a456463 9mo ago
  Stop making your kids my problem! We have everything to hide. It is called personal identity. All data online managed by companies will always be misused, lost to scammers, blamed back to you for something you never did, and hunt you down.
  • cubefox 9mo ago
    > Stop making your kids my problem! This is an interesting point: there is a trade-off between kids being denied access to inappropriate websites and adults not being forced to verify their age. We can't have both, so we must weigh which is more important. One could argue that protecting kids is clearly more important; on the other hand, there are way more adults in the world than kids, so more people are impacted with restrictions for adults.
    • warkdarrior 9mo ago
      > there are way more adults in the world than kids How can that be? The world population has been growing for decades.
      • cubefox 9mo ago
        Yeah but kids that are online are perhaps ~5 to 17, while adults go from 18 to 80, 90 or more. Moreover, social media is usually also allowed for older teenagers, so it's not necessarily all people up to 18 that need filtering out.
    • mghackerlady 9mo ago
      I saw porn when I was under 18, and I'd wager the majority of people also have going back to the 70s or 80s. We all ended up mostly normal
      • wvenable 8mo ago
        <<Looks around>>> You call this normal?!?
      • 8mo ago
• autoexec 9mo ago
  I won't do it for any of them. I've got an endless selection of things competing for my time and attention and I'll be happy to find another one where needed.
• a456463 9mo ago
  Your ipad babies are not my problem. It's called parenting. Don't do ipad parenting then. We didn't get a SEGA console and cable TV was restricted to only 2 hours. It was fine. It was fun. The only thing I wish for from my child is more time with friends not more screen time.
• moi2388 9mo ago
  I initially thought, well, we can implement it with zero knowledge claims, just a yes/no from a government app: am I allowed to use this app? I.e. is my age above let’s say 16 or 18? But then I remembered the game 20 questions, and how few yes/no questions you need to guess pretty much any concept. I am no longer willing to share anything, not even a yes/no question.
• mcv 9mo ago
  I completely agree. The only services for which I will verify my age (and the entire rest of my ID) are bank accounts and other services involving a real legal requirement for real ID. The notion that you should upload a passport to random sites for age verification is unbelievably dangerous. That's a recipe for identity theft. And face scanning is also an invasion of privacy, not to mention very unreliable (my 16 year old son has apparently been accepted as 20 years old). I've pointed out in many places already that the only way to do online age verification right, is for the government to provide an e-ID that the random site will direct you to with the question "is this person older than X?", then you log in to the e-ID site, which informs you exactly what the site wants to know (which should be as rough as possible; no birthdate), then the e-ID site directs you back to your original site (or possibly through a proxy, if you don't want the government to know what sites you visit), and calls their webhook (through a proxy) with the confirmation of your age. That's also how my online payments work, and this should be the standard pattern for everything that needs to be secure. Not sharing sensitive or personal data with random sites.
  • shiandow 9mo ago
    That very much isn't the only right way, and it is far to close to government tracking activities online. For one it effectively allows governments to disallow someone from accessing the internet. All this to let you do stuff you were allowed to do anyway. The problem is handing kids admin level access on a device with full unfiltered access to several communication networks. You do not fix that by demoting everyone's access.
    • fc417fc802 9mo ago
      I wholeheartedly agree. Worse, these verification "solutions" distract from fixing the actual underlying issue. We need better supervision which demands better parental controls which demands better content filtering which demands better content classification. So fix the root. Legally mandate a standardized protocol for self reporting the content rating of resources.
      • 8mo ago
• hedora 9mo ago
  I wish we lived in the timeline where the most reputable and market-leading age verification provider was PornHub, which would have a modestly dressed model check via video chat. I'd actually trust that more than the actual providers that exist in reality, and hey, if even 1% of the money goes to college tuition, great. Of course, if that was how this worked, the optics would kill most of these schemes before they were implemented. As a parent, I'd like to point out that the threat I care about is not "my kid of age N talks to a sicko of age M, where M - N > P for some legislatively-prescribed value of P". The threat is "my kid of age N talks to or can be observed by a sicko". These age verification schemes do nothing to help against that. Also, the worst predators online are often the vendors providing "kid friendly" services. On top of that, these laws are being pushed hardest by the worst of the most corrupt politicians on earth. Why would I install a webcam on my kid's machine because that group of people wants me to?!? Maybe we should focus on prosecuting the backlog of stuff in the Epstein files pertaining to politicians pushing these age verification services, not let anyone (except parents) control how kids access stuff online.
• ottah 9mo ago
  Age verification is about one thing only, it's about controlling how you participate in public society. The state wants a veto on public participation that they don't like. This system will not prevent children from being exposed to unsafe spaces, but it will be effective at barring people with counter political narratives from sharing online. Look how they've desperately tried to crack down on Epstein and information on Gaza. They want the same controls over information and political content as China.
• _slih 9mo ago
  the verification service is the honeypot by design. it has to store what it collected to prove it did the check. the incentive to retain is built into the business model, and the breach is just a matter of time.
• nottorp 9mo ago
  Umm. Yes. I completely agree. What else is there to say? Any such verification service will either sell your data or lose it. Will not may.
• efsavage 9mo ago
  I think there should be an option to assume I'm a child and proceed from there. If I want access to any mature content or real identify related stuff, I'll verify, but if your service doesn't have or need that anyways then there's no reason to prove I'm an adult.
• bradley13 9mo ago
  It is likely not a coincidence that so many different countries simultaneously started pushing for age verification. The decline of privacy, the increase in intrusive government surveillance, the increasing restrictions on free speech - this is all part of a very disturbing pattern. Our governments are becoming increasingly authoritarian, and these are the tools they use to keep the populace under control.
  • simmerup 9mo ago
    And also our countries are being attacked by external actors who want to sow discord and damage our institutions
    • seanw444 9mo ago
      > sow discord Funny choice of wording: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/discord-voluntarily-pushes-mandatory-age-verification-despite-recent-data-breach https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/discord-voluntarily-pu...
  • barbazoo 9mo ago
    > It is likely not a coincidence that so many different countries simultaneously started pushing for age verification. I thought in many places it was related to the upcoming minimum age for social media. To verify age you need an ID. That's how we make it so most kids can't buy cigarettes, alcohol, thc, etc. You could argue social media shouldn't have a minimum age but that'll be the reality it looks like. How do we do that without ID?
    • bradley13 9mo ago
      Sure, "think of the children", that's the classic excuse. Put on your tinfoil hat and ask yourself: why is that suddenly a topic in so many different countries?
      • jim33442 9mo ago
        Well "think of the children" was the PR reason for the US clamping down on TikTok, while the lawmakers and lobbyists behind it said pretty openly that it's about silencing criticism of Israel. So I would think it's the same thing in the EU.
• cdrnsf 9mo ago
  It is not the job of the government to parent in place of people who are not up to the task. There should be reasonable guardrails, but these laws are Orwellian.
• alpenglow9 9mo ago
  Would you be willing to verify your age/identity if you had a cryptographic guarantee that the information exchange would be zero-knowledge?
• naughtyrabisu 9mo ago
  Why not? For particular industries like healthcare, you do need to verify your age for PII/HIPPA
• jim33442 9mo ago
  I'm not reluctant. Rather, there's zero chance I'll do this. If Discord wants to put me into <18 mode for it, fine.
• Bender 9mo ago
  I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services I do not hesitate to drop a domain that acts suspicious into uBlock Origin -> My Filters: ||somedomain.tld$ Never gets another packet from me. I use local Brick & Mortar businesses for as many things as I can. The businesses on the internet have jumped the shark.
  • kyleee 8mo ago
    Nice, so that just nukes anything and everything from that domain? I use ublock filters extensively but haven’t specified an entire domain like this
    • Bender 8mo ago
      I have a typo. the $ should be ^ but otherwise yes. ||github.com^ would block all of github.com
• xg15 9mo ago
  I sort of get his point, but on the other hand, if the debate is "should social media sites be age restricted / have mandatory age verification?" then the argument "I can't see any reason to, because I personally don't use social media" doesn't seem particularly useful.
• dgxyz 9mo ago
  I'm not reluctant to. I just won't! I'm punching myself in the balls one way or another.
• shevy-java 9mo ago
  They hate us for our freedom. I don't buy for a second that any of this has to do with "age verification". This is 100% an attempt to increase surveillance of the population. It is not an isolated step but part of a cohesive unit - YOU are the data. And private entities want the data. That includes the state; many states are de-facto led like a corporation (not all states, by the way, but many - most definitely the USA right now).
• Joel_Mckay 9mo ago
  These are the times, even renewing a nmfta scac code in the US may require government ID, social security number, and biometric profile check. Save yourself $5 and use a smart-phone, as a webcam will not work... There are no refunds after 3 failures to scan ID. In general, a social security number is extremely sensitive, and should never be shared outside your home country tax system. Verification is indeed a perverse invasion of privacy, and a liability to those with financial holdings. I guess the credit-lock service is now a must to deal with the circus that is modern logistics. =3
• tegling 9mo ago
  Isn't the eIDAS2 regulation addressing this issue? It applies to EU/EES and from my understanding would help enforcing the data minimization principle related to user identity. I.e. a service (like a social media platform) wouldn't be allowed to force you to show your identity unless they are required by law to know your identity. Instead, the EUDI wallet provides functionality related to identification through (user-managed) pseudonyms. For services that are required by law to verify user age, the wallet provide means to make verifiable claims like "over 18". Am I missing something?
• rng-concern 9mo ago
  When I heard roblox was doing this, I asked both my kids if they uploaded their face data. They both had already. I didn't think to warn them. Really annoyed a company can ask this of children without parental consent.
  • futune 8mo ago
    This raises an intriguing idea. The solutions will require children to upload their personal information, including photos. Like roblox. Children are clearly not capable of understanding the ramifications of this decision. So, prompting children to upload such info should itself be illegal. Nevermind that most adults do not understand the ramifications either, but we assume they are capable of consenting to anything by fiat, so let's ignore that...
• mixmastamyk 9mo ago
  In our corner, school I.T. is provided free by the biggest advertising company on the planet. Has been for a while. What could go wrong?
• kkfx 9mo ago
  I simply do refuse such systems, so far using decentralized or distributed socials like Nostr, Lemmy (self-hosted) and VPNs as glorified proxies and that's just because there aren't enough co-Citizens to impose a significant change with a national general strike enduring as much as needed to makes the government RUN, literally, to avoid lifetime jail...
• K0balt 9mo ago
  Personal harm may vary. If the government is coming for you (ICE) cookies could pinpoint your address, and since ice uses palatine or just buys data from brokers, they’ll use that to show up on your lawn.
• mareko 9mo ago
  The solution is zk verifiable credentials, which would let folks prove their age without revealing their DOB (or anything else on their ID) to third parties. This is possible today with complete privacy for people with biometric IDs and biometric passports (ie most passports, EU IDs, Aadhaar IDs, and more) using a service like self.xyz
• einpoklum 9mo ago
  Age verification is quite bogus. Parents can stand over their children's shoulder and force them to do or not do one thing or the other (and maybe not even them); but some website dictating which content young people can watch or not watch - not acceptable. And if you want to make a "protect the delicate mind of children" argument - let's first see some censoring of all of the ads, sponsored content, and state and corporate propaganda as unfit for viewing by underaged people; which is, of course, never going to happen.
  • a456463 9mo ago
    Tbh it is unfit for my in laws as well. And one is a gambling addict. The real regulation won't get done but policing people and becoming authoritarian, sure
• jrm4 9mo ago
  Again, this must be framed ecologically, not individually. We've moved past the point where "individual choices" matter a whole lot, a lot of this is not much of an individual choice at all. So, it's good to remember the leanings of people like the author, but it's perhaps more important to remember the extent to which this is a collective issue. I never trusted 23 and me. But my Dad did, so now I potentially have a problem. Reminded of another anecdote about a guy who did everything to not use is social security number for ID for ANYTHING. Then someone pointed out -- it doesn't matter, they have everyone elses, so yours is the missing one. Policy and skin-in-the-game for the COLLECTORS of the info is the thing to focus on.
  • medi8r 9mo ago
    https://xkcd.com/1105/ https://xkcd.com/1105/
• phippsytech 9mo ago
  I'm suprised that ZKP almost never gets mentioned when it comes to age verification. It seems like it is a solution that does protect PII. There is a learning curve for the general public, but having watched the hoops a mother recently had to jump through so her kids could play Mario Kart on Nintendo Switch, I think it is not that difficult.
• jmyeet 9mo ago
  The only people who can be trusted with any form of identity (including age) vertification is the government. You know, the same people who issued the identity documents and know who you are. It's not some SV-backed startup. It's not Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon or Meta. It's the government.
• BoneShard 9mo ago
  I sort of like these restrictions. You're making hard for me to access your site - I close it. You block it behind a paywall - I close it. You block it because of ublock - fine again, I close your site. I have only so much time and you're helping me.
• mghackerlady 9mo ago
  The only way I can think of to do this completely anonymously (at least for the government and social media) is for you to buy a card in cash that has a little code on it. You'd need your ID to buy it, and you'd put your code into your operating system and things that demand age verification can ask the OS whether or not you're over 18. Alternatively, you can give the service your code to verify your age, but that would be less convenient and lead to a larger tracking footprint, so it likely wouldn't be used unless necessary
  • tkzed49 9mo ago
    Can I buy them for my underage friends at different stores? Is there revocation and hence a database that maps codes to identities? How are the codes minted? Can I pretend to be a gas station and buy a big pack of ID cards, then just not check ID?
    • mghackerlady 8mo ago
      That kind of thing is for someone with governing experience to solve. I suppose revoking them every now and then would be good, and maybe for ease of minting new unique codes they could loosely be tied to location. I'm not too worried about that, as your IP could be used in a similar way and the services shouldn't be reading the codes themselves regularly anyway
• jijji 9mo ago
  The way that it would make sense for age verification is if there was some federal system that verifies your identity and then it would use a public key crypto system to allow a third party to check whether or not this person is over the age or not.... common systems I see being used right now that could be integrated for this purpose would be login.gov or id.me... they could allow a token-based authentication system for verification of age without having to divulge any other information about the person. these systems are already being used by the IRS, VA, SSA and other Federal systems.
• cs02rm0 9mo ago
  The very concept they've been trying to sell is wrong headed. Kids are trying to access XYZ which isn't safe (where XYZ may as well be "the internet") -> verify the ages of all adults, because we can't verify the age of a kid. Meanwhile kids, like adults, can just find another route to access what they want. So some subset of adults hands over their identity information to an untrustworthy third party of dubious security. I can't see how that does anything other than make the situation worse.
• nathias 8mo ago
  the fight for privacy was lost in the 90s, it's time to move on
• teamonkey 8mo ago
  I was annoyed the other day when Reddit asked for age verification (via a Palantir-run service, no less) for my 18-year-old Reddit account. Obviously no way I’m doing that. In any case I doubt there’s a proof of age stronger than looking at the subreddits I subscribe to. A broad selection of middle-age hobbies and tedious interests. Without me proving my age they could probably place it to within a few weeks.
• agenthustler 8mo ago
  [flagged]
• midtake 8mo ago
  Then don't. No one is putting a gun to your head and making you use groomer Discord or roblox aka pedoblox. Pedoblox is a fetid swamp of groomers that needs to be nuked from orbit.
• cx42net 8mo ago
  France is currently working on a solution that provides age verification using double anonymity. The "France Identité" use the identity card of the holder and generates a cryptographic proof of the age. The website wanting to check the age of the holder request the cryptographic proof, validates it against France's public key without querying government websites (that way, the government won't know you are trying to access pornhub). This is, I believe, I concrete and working solution to age verification without having to provide any sensitive information to any website that will surely loose it in an breach. Source (in French): https://www.frandroid.com/culture-tech/web/2962099_france-identite-voici-une-solution-propre-pour-prouver-son-age-sans-donner-son-nom-ni-son-age-exact https://www.frandroid.com/culture-tech/web/2962099_france-id...
• grimblee 8mo ago
  I am pretty sure they know our identity pretty accurately already, through browser fingerprinting and google's gmail data, my real concern is the half-assed security measure with our id cards. The persona breach just recently proved they cannot be trusted and this expose us to identity fraud/theft.
• jasonvorhe 8mo ago
  Reluctant? Guess I'm more of an extremist. I'll rather stop using a service and delete my account than to jump through hoops to get my face scanned. I'm willing to die on this hill.