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.
I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
261–270 of 645 posts
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#262I 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…
My inclination is to simply close the window as soon as there's a popup of any sort. If someone did that to you in public you would be within your right to punch them in their face as an act of self defense.
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#263It 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.
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am in my mid forties, been working as a professional software developer for over 20 years. I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. What “dark pattern cookie trick” are you worried about? I just can’t come up with a scenario where it will actually harm me in any way. All the examples I have heard are either completely implausible…
I would imagine it's the GDPR "ACCEPT ALL COOKIES" in big font and then in very small low contrast text "select some cookies" or "reject cookies" that they were describing.
technically, it's the ePrivacy directive. GDPR requires the consent to process personal data and governs the data but the ePrivacy directive is the instrument that requires that god-damn-please-make-it-stop-banner.
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#265I'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…
The problem is those self-same authoritarian strongmen are very successfully using sockpuppeting to change national discourses in ways that benefit them and are detrimental to the targeted countries. Hybrid war is real and has been ongoing for more than a decade. LLMs make it way more cost effective. Being able to limit the influence of external bad actors is the main goal of ID verification. Age verification is a us…
Correct.
The choice is between democracy and our current ever worsening sociopolitical hellscape.
If eliminating bots and sockpuppets is the price for restoring some semblance of democracy, then gosh darn.
And if social media, targeted ads, and algorithmic hate machines are collateral damage, than gee double gosh darn.
Those sacrifices are a price I'm willing to pay.
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#266I 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 am in my mid forties, been working as a professional software developer for over 20 years. I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. What “dark pattern cookie trick” are you worried about? I just can’t come up with a scenario where it will actually harm me in any way. All the examples I have heard are either completely implausible…
Read the fine print. You’re usually not consenting to cookies, you’re consenting to having your data gathered, processed, enriched and sold by hundreds of companies around the world.
One click usually gives random foreign corpos the right to your data across a multitude of platforms, the right to identify you across data sets, and to permanently link your device identifiers to you, for ”fraud detection” on a site which sells nothing.
Clicking on accept or deny on those notices makes no real difference, since the ”partners” and ”vendors” usually enshrine their core data activities into the ”legitimate interest” category, which has no opt-out.
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. When we create a safer world, people’s defense mechanisms naturally atrophy or are never developed in the first place.
That's the philosophy behind Safety Third.
Just curious, what come first and second in this use of the phrase applied to computer security? I came to know the expression from fire circus performance and adjacent circles, where first and second are safety of the audience and the venue, and third is your own. I use it often when I'm about to knowingly do something sketchy or potentially dangerous without applying safety practices required "by the book", acknowledging the present danger to myself and accepting the risk. I never saw it used in infosec context.
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#268It 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.
And also our countries are being attacked by external actors who want to sow discord and damage our institutions
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#269Earlier 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…
> 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.
I totally disagree!!! Yes, everyone works with computer, phone, tablet, whatever, nowdays!
But does generation z "knows" about what a computer is?
Absolutely not!!!
While tech has advanced and graduated IT personal know more than previous generations (obviously!), all the rest, while they do know how to do their jobs, they know nothing about computers!!! They are pretty much like everyone else that didn't know what a computer was in generations x and previous!!!
However, contrary to previous generations, because they do interact with the tech, they represent a higher security risc for them and for others!
... Because they know nothing about it!!!
It's like giving a box of matches to a neanderthal in the middle of the woods...
Almost everyone in the "Gen x and previous" that interacted with the tech, did know what they were doing (past the initial learning phase)!!!
This does not happen after gen x!
Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
#270I 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 am in my mid forties, been working as a professional software developer for over 20 years. I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. What “dark pattern cookie trick” are you worried about? I just can’t come up with a scenario where it will actually harm me in any way. All the examples I have heard are either completely implausible…
I like to just roll over and bite the pillow, click "accept all cookies" and let them go in dry and unprotected.