I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by jstanley » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

bmacho wrote: post #56

bArray wrote: post #6

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 entire…

It's not just cookies, it's explicit consent to track you, and sell your browsing history to ~1500 spy companies around the world. To the sibling comments: don't "accept the cookies" and then delete them. - - - I'm super angry at what the web has become, especially at the OS browser community. There is 0 browser (that I know of) that can access the web safely and conveniently. Atm I use Firefox with uBlock which bloc…

> every single extension provides 100% access to my websites to whoever controls the extension.

But the browser also has 100% access to all of the websites. The browser is software that works for you. You control the browser.

Who but yourself do you imagine controls your extensions?

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

#102

Post by morleytj » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #84

thewebguyd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept It's really alarming, actually. I run the cyber security training & phishing simulations at my work, and it's the younger employees that struggle the most. It's like they just assume that everything on the web is trustworthy. It's not hard to see why though. They grew up with app stores & locked down devices. No concept of a file or file system,…

That's an exaggeration. Young people on average have grown up with drastically greater understanding of what a file is than any other generation that has come before them. They grew up using Chromebooks or laptops in school, constantly interacting with the local file systems, uploading files to Instagram and TikTok from the file systems on their smartphones, browsing their phones for files constantly. They know what…

There may be some demographic groups located between people who were young during the 1980s and people who are young during the 2020s, time periods which are 40 years apart.

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

#103

Post by philwelch » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #53

CafeRacer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept There is a similar story with Ford and how they build pavement everywhere and taught the young population that roads are for cars. Now we have to drive for 10 minutes to get from one shop on the plaza to another shop on the different plaza.

It was the bikes who fought for pavement everywhere. Cars took it all over. Mud is annoying to walk it, but otherwise humans handle bare dirt just fine.

And horses actually do better on dirt than on pavement.

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

#104

Post by 8organicbits » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

PyWoody wrote: post #8

bArray wrote: post #6

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 entire…

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.

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-ac...

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

#105

Post by whywhywhywhy » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

darknavi wrote: post #73

thewebguyd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept It's really alarming, actually. I run the cyber security training & phishing simulations at my work, and it's the younger employees that struggle the most. It's like they just assume that everything on the web is trustworthy. It's not hard to see why though. They grew up with app stores & locked down devices. No concept of a file or file system,…

Maybe we should make young learners in primary school use "infected" Windows XP so they can dodge spam popups and learn what and what not to click.

They'd just click it away every time, when my nephew got a gaming laptop he'd play mindcraft and the windows sticky keys popup would be firing constantly must have seen him dismiss it 15 times before I offered to show him how to get rid of it.

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

#106

Post by fragmede » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #84

thewebguyd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept It's really alarming, actually. I run the cyber security training & phishing simulations at my work, and it's the younger employees that struggle the most. It's like they just assume that everything on the web is trustworthy. It's not hard to see why though. They grew up with app stores & locked down devices. No concept of a file or file system,…

That's an exaggeration. Young people on average have grown up with drastically greater understanding of what a file is than any other generation that has come before them. They grew up using Chromebooks or laptops in school, constantly interacting with the local file systems, uploading files to Instagram and TikTok from the file systems on their smartphones, browsing their phones for files constantly. They know what…

That's also a stereotype. Gen Z (born 1997 to 2012) is roughly 2 billion people. Among them are the technorati, and the tech literate. The influencers and the influenced. It's fair to compare what was available to them growing up, vs yourself (I learned to program before there was Google), but it's hard to say things that are going to be universally true across that many humans that are interesting. Most of them will have two arms and two legs but will most be able to navigate /etc/systemd/user/? Can't say.

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

#107

Post by chneu » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

sspiff wrote: post #60

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 g…

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.

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

#108

Post by CommieBobDole » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

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.

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

#109

Post by Barbing » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #21

bArray wrote: post #6

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 entire…

Accept the cookies and flush them out every time you close the browser. I think it would be naive anyway to assume that clicking no on a cookie banner would achieve much for your privacy.

No, shan’t give them the metrics :)

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

#110

Post by thewebguyd » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #84

thewebguyd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept It's really alarming, actually. I run the cyber security training & phishing simulations at my work, and it's the younger employees that struggle the most. It's like they just assume that everything on the web is trustworthy. It's not hard to see why though. They grew up with app stores & locked down devices. No concept of a file or file system,…

That's an exaggeration. Young people on average have grown up with drastically greater understanding of what a file is than any other generation that has come before them. They grew up using Chromebooks or laptops in school, constantly interacting with the local file systems, uploading files to Instagram and TikTok from the file systems on their smartphones, browsing their phones for files constantly. They know what…

And yet, it's the generation that struggles the most with managing files on their work laptops and on SMB shares.

They know app silos, not file system hierarchy. Ask a teenager where a file is on their phone and the will tell you the name of an app. Ask them how to copy it somewhere else, and they'll use the share sheet and send it to another app.

High adoption doesn't equate to high literacy.