Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#251

Post by luplex »

julianozen wrote: post #235

There is missing a solution. Give our personal devices have the ability to verify our age and identity securely and store on device like they do our fingerprint or face data. Services that need access only verify it cryptographically. So my iPhone can confirm I’m over 21 for my DoorDash app in the same way it stores my biometric data. The challenge here is the adoption of these encryption services and whether compani…

I think this is what my German electronic ID card does. The card connects to an app on my phone via NFC, a service can cryptographically verify a claim about my age, and no additional info is leaked to the service provider or the government.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#252

Post by dyauspitr »

bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

I think so. A lot of people think the internet now is a somewhat negative construct and don’t feel so strongly about it somewhat dying away.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#253

Post by Aurornis »

bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

When ID checks are rolled out there is immediate outrage. Discord announced ID checks for some features a couple weeks ago and it has been a non-stop topic here.

From what I’ve seen, most of the pro-ID commenters are coming from positions where they assume ID checks will only apply to other people, not them. They want services they don’t use like TikTok and Facebook to become strict, but they have their own definitions of social media that exclude platforms they use like Discord and Hacker News. When the ID checks arrive and impact them they’re outraged.

Regulation for thee, not for me.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#254

Post by tolmasky »

Noaidi wrote: post #214
tolmasky wrote: post #155

I am so surprised by the comments on this thread. I was not expecting to see so many people on Hacker News in favor of this. As is typically the case with things like this, the reasoning stems from agreeing with the goal of age verification, with little regard to whether age verification could ever actually work. It reminds me in some sense to the situation with encryption where politicians want encryption that block…

Whatever happened to all the innovation the tech world was capable of? This is 100% a solvable problem. It only needs the will and good law. 1) Person signs up with discord with fake name and fake email. 2) Discord asks (state system) for an age validation. 3) In pop up window, state validates the persons age with ID matching with face recognition. 3) State system sends token to discord with yes or no with zero data…

I want to sincerely ask whether you read my post, because your response is so unrelated I believe you might accidentally be responding to another post? If so, please ignore the rest, which is only intended in the case where you are actually responding to what I wrote.

Your system seems to address none of the issues I listed. For example, I argue that one difficulty is in the fact that these systems would be highly phishable -- a property that is present in your described "easy" solution. Your system trains users to become accustomed to being pestered by pop up windows that ask to see their ID and use their camera. Congrats, I can now trivially make a pop up a window that looks like this UI and use it to steal your info, as the user will just respond on auto-drive, as we have repeatedly shown both in user studies and in our own lived experiences. I also explained how a system like this would assist in the practice of trapping migrant workers by confiscating their government credentials [1]. This is a huge problem today in Asia, and one of the few outlets captive workers can use to escape this control is the internet -- a "loophole" your system would dutifully close for these corporations.

I am happy to have a discussion about this -- it's how we come up with new solutions! But that requires reading and responding to the concerns I brought up, not assuming that my issue is that I can't imagine implementing a glorified OAuth login flow.

1. There's tons of articles about this, here is one of the first ones that comes up on Google: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/05/saudi-arabia-...

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#255

Post by [deleted] »

jraby3 wrote: post #76
bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

I used to be so against this but after the never ending cat and mouse game with my kids (especially my son) I don't think the tech crowd really appreciates how frustrating it is and how many different screens there are. Tons of data also showing higher suicide rates, depression rates, eating disorders etc. so it's not as if there is no good side to this.

[deleted]

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#256

Post by some_random »

bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

There's absolutely some astroturfing happening, but I wouldn't discount that there is some organic support as well. Journalists have been pushing total de-anonymization of the internet for a while now, and there are plenty of people susceptible to listening to them.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#257

Post by enraged_camel »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #124

> And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely. This is a false premise already; the company can check the age (or have a third party like iDIN [0] do it), then set a marker "this person is 18+" and "we verified it using this method at this date". That should be enough. [0] https://www.idin.nl/en/

Nope, as the article notes, it is actually almost never enough because it does not stand up to legal scrutiny. And for good reason: there's no way to conclusively prove that the platform actually verified the user's age, as opposed to simply saying they did, before letting them in.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#259

Post by hamdingers »

cromka wrote: post #192
armchairhacker wrote: post #55

Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account. If that's criminalized (like alcohol), it will happen too often to prosecute (much more frequently than alcohol, which is rarely prosecuted anyways). I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift. If there's a fundamental culture shift, there's an eas…

This is Nirvana/Perfect Solution fallacy. That's like saying limiting smoking to 18 y/o was futile because teenagers could always have some other adult buy them cigs, or use fake IDs. Ridiculous take.

For the smoking analogy to fit, you'd have to have parents giving their children packs of cigarettes to play with and then being mad at Marlboro they figured out how to smoke them.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#260

Post by [deleted] »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #95
iamnothere wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there is some organic support, there is a lot of coordinated astroturfing. It’s apparent if you watch the discussions across platforms, there are obvious shared talking points that come in waves. Governments (and a few companies) really want this.

> Governments (and a few companies) really want this. The cynic in me fears they don't want a privacy-preserving solution, which blinds them to 'who'. Because that would satisfy parents worried about their kids and many privacy conscious folks. Rather, they want a blank check to blackmail or imprison only their opponents.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN