Just have the user calculate an average difficulty integral. If he/she succeeds they are of legal age or very close to it. Even if they use Wolfram Alpha that still denotes some level of maturity which is consistent with legal age.
Age verification is incompatible with the internet
141–150 of 161 posts
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#142Parents and caretakers have the ability to restrict children’s content on any device a child has access to. The burden should be on them to ensure their child is not consuming porn. It shouldn’t be everyone else’s problem that people are unwilling to parent their children.
You can't expect parents to hover over their children 24/7. Apply the argument you're making to any other instance of corrupting minors. If you have sex with a 14 year old, you're not going to be able to say, "Well the kid's parents should have been watching him..." to the judge. The same applies to showing porn to one.
> You can't expect parents to hover over their children 24/7
That's not what's being asked. There already exists software, and optional functionality on OSs/routers/browsers, that allows parents to restrict what sites can be viewed. This software covers more sites (and offer greater customization) than proposals involving sites verifying ID would, since:
* The software can trivially add sites to its blacklist regardless of whether they're outside of jurisdictions that would require ID verification
* Sites are more likely to identify themselves as pornographic than to implement ID verification, since it's a significantly smaller burden
* Small/obscure sites that could fall under the radar with non-compliance on ID verification can still be blocked by the software with statistical/ML methods
* For young children a whitelist of known-safe sites can be used
Neither approach is perfect. With ID verification, a child could use a free VPN to bypass it, or be shown a friend's older brother's ID. With filter software, a child could borrow an unfiltered device and find an unfiltered Internet connection to use it on. The question is: would ID verification be better to such an extent that it justifies the privacy invasion and increased risk of fraud, blackmail, etc.? To me, it seems substantially worse than existing solutions.
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> any device a child has access to. That's not the world we live in today. Stores local to me will sell a (terrible but internet capable) phone for $35 to anyone. So you are proposing moving the age verification to the device purchasing stage?
Complete strawman on a complete strawman situation that isn’t even real. What $35 phone out there has the network bandwidth for porn that isn’t tied to identity in a way that a parent couldn’t easily spot and prevent?
BTW I can pay $30-$100 for a decent Android phone (low end Motorola/Samsung) and a year of talk/text/data in the US.
These deals are extremely common in the US: https://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php?q=tracfone&searcharea=d...
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#144Beyond all the hystery around this topic, I feel like blocking porn site to minors is a reasonable requirement and it can be done with no privacy concern neither on the site side nor on the government side. It's a straightforward usage of basic crypto tools. Says: - the porn site creates a challenge and send it to the browser. - the browser goes to the governmental service where one uses tax ID or the like to prove a…
> Do I miss something? The point of the article? The idea that I shouldn't have to ask my government for permission to view information/media? The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government? I'm all for, "wont somebody think of the children", but IMO protecting children is a 'solved' problem. When a child runs into the street we blame the parents, we don't install gates down every sidewalk. Wh…
> The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government?
Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party.
Now, whether governments should have the right to restrict access to certain types of information and media based on age is a different question
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do I miss something? The point of the article? The idea that I shouldn't have to ask my government for permission to view information/media? The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government? I'm all for, "wont somebody think of the children", but IMO protecting children is a 'solved' problem. When a child runs into the street we blame the parents, we don't install gates down every sidewalk. Wh…
> The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government? Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party. Now, whether governments should have the right to restrict access to certain types of information and media based on age is a different question
> Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party.
This is incorrect, and a gross misunderstanding of how either network requests on the internet work, or crypto... likely both.
Are you really saying someone looking at an ID card is the same as my computer sending a request containing my ID to a government entity, and waiting for a response?
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government? Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party. Now, whether governments should have the right to restrict access to certain types of information and media based on age is a different question
> Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party. This is incorrect, and a gross misunderstanding of how either network requests on the internet work, or crypto... likely both. Are you really saying someone looking at an ID card is the same as my computer sending a request containing m…
Here’s an idea for how it could work while preserving your privacy.
1. User verifies their age with a trusted party (which may or may not be a government body)
2. User requests a token from the trusted party. The token is signed so 3rd parties can verify it. The token also includes the public key of the user so 3rd parties can verify whom it is for
3. The user shares this token with the 3rd party site, who is now able to verify the user’s age. Note, the 3rd party site never has to contact the issuer of the token other than to get their public key.
With this model, the token issuer is not able to connect the user to the 3rd party site directly.
We can, of course, think about possible attacks but this is just a basic illustration of the possibilities.
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
This means disabling any means of downloading custom software for the under 18, right? Forget coding if you are under 18, because all of that would be so simple to bypass unless you completely lock it all. Games and everything need to be vetted when you are 17? Since if you allow them any kid could also download a custom browser as well to get past that, and if there is a way, this info will be shared amongst kids.
Not if the parent controls a screenshot analyzer trained to detect objectionable figures, patterns, and phrases. This would work above the browser and IDE.
Maybe could even have a drone follow your kid before they are 18 to make sure they do nothing else questionable as well?
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
In practice, how do these system expect the kids (much more technically savvy than their parents, and with a motive) not to get their hands on their parents'? (As you know, kids often get access to credit cards without parents knowledge.)
Biometrics identification required to release the record (eg the Secure Enclave in iOS could sign it) You can believe that a standard committee of very smart people (technical and regulatory) was thinking about all these problems so saying “what about X” isn’t helpful when X is an obvious concern. A sufficiently advanced attacker could probably figure something out (especially with these 3p apps which are bound to ha…
> You can believe that a standard committee of very smart people (technical and regulatory) was thinking about all these problems so saying “what about X” isn’t helpful when X is an obvious concern.
Really? Doesn't HN show on a monthly basis that no, exactly nothing directly follows from that premise? Typically the committee has completely different incentives and directions from, well, half the planet's wants?
At that stage though, mine was just a question. I was curious.
> they will be stopped once they become a known vector of identity theft
Okay. I'll agree to disagree. See US Social Security Numbers, cell phone numbers, credit card system...
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#149If every person can be identified uniquely and mapped to a real person, and this is what age verification will come down to, then each of us can be fed with different kind of bullshit, our thoughts can be even more easily manipulated systematically. That is the price to pay.
And what's happening now?
People like you having the certainty your freedom to casually engage in these types of topics that may be critical of powerful entities won't result in a form of specific targeting that gives a legally accepted pathway to finding out your private information. Or something.
Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do I miss something? The point of the article? The idea that I shouldn't have to ask my government for permission to view information/media? The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government? I'm all for, "wont somebody think of the children", but IMO protecting children is a 'solved' problem. When a child runs into the street we blame the parents, we don't install gates down every sidewalk. Wh…
> The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government? Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party. Now, whether governments should have the right to restrict access to certain types of information and media based on age is a different question
>Done Property
Why would it ever be?
Either incompetency or Malevolence will make itself manifest.