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So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

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Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the clerk will often enter some of that data into the store's system I've only seen them enter the date of birth. No identifying information. If they record the ID itself I'd recommend going to a different store. Or ideally, writing your legislators to have the practice banned.

Depending on the size of the town, date of birth could be used to severely narrow down and target a specific person. If one suspects a partner of buying alcohol and could convince or coerse the clerk, or even just peek in the book, and see the partner's date of birth written there, then that is good enough proof for many people and many purposes.

We should end carding for alcohol for everyone because domestic abuse exists?

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#302
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government might not know which website exactly, but the fact that you are looking to verify your age is in itself a datum that you might not want the government to know. "Palata was either looking at porn or buying drugs in January 2026" is probably not something you want the government to know, even if the specifics are obscure.

Unless your e-ID app automatically requests 20 age verification tokens for everybody, whether they use them or not.

How are you going to farm the UUID for each user? Or are the IDs sequential?

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the size of the town, date of birth could be used to severely narrow down and target a specific person. If one suspects a partner of buying alcohol and could convince or coerse the clerk, or even just peek in the book, and see the partner's date of birth written there, then that is good enough proof for many people and many purposes.

We should end carding for alcohol for everyone because domestic abuse exists?

That's a ridiculous conclusion. Identifying a single problem with an implementation is not a reason to abandon the implementation completely.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should end carding for alcohol for everyone because domestic abuse exists?

That's a ridiculous conclusion. Identifying a single problem with an implementation is not a reason to abandon the implementation completely.

It seems to be what you're saying. Otherwise I don't know what the point of your previous comment was.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying alcohol is nothing like getting an anonymous token that grants the right to a Google account. This is equivalent to saying you either need to be over 16 or have a parents permission which will not work for any number reasons that someone else can enumerate. It's a nice idea. Won't work.

Why won't it work?

So a parent gets some joy knowing their kid is running around in the sun and not being the object of some Internet predator. If some kids have Internet suddenly your kid is bugging you 16 hours a day to unlock their access. You don't want to police your kid, what you want is that ability taken out of your hands so your kid will stop annoying you.

I think the analogy is to compulsory education.

In this analogy an anonymous token from a liquor store saying "I am an adult" would be equivalent to any adult being able to buy any kid a "get out of school" card. Maybe it would work but somehow I don't think it would - and to the degree it would work it would be because of parents making sure their kids were in school - which let's be honest is what compulsory bans are trying to avoid (i.e. create less work for parents by having the ban be universal).

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