Age check is only pushed because this way you can tell humans from bots. Prove me wrong
There will be ways to circumvent and even use verified devices as botnets.
Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
201–210 of 549 posts
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#202Doesn't seem like most of the people on this thread actually read what they're planning. It seems like a very good solution to me. It gives parents a simple solution to define the age of the phones user and a mechanism to allow apps to get an age range and tailor usage appropriately. It does all this while leaving everyone else undisturbed. Put the age range into http headers and you solve children accessing content…
Through a Google account. It's not some device check.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who? The lawmakers? I believe banning children up to a certain age from having Internet-enabled mobile devices is a good starting point, and both child protection services and law enforcement services should fully cooperate with parents in enforcing that ban. If you see a kid smoking a cigarette or taking drugs, you know parents have failed somewhere along the road and it would be preferable if the government could s…
In many schools in the US now, kids are issued mandatory iPads from age 5 and are required to use them to complete school assignments.
Which sounds like a government mandated child harm measure to me.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#204I'd be totally fine to solve this problem by banning children from the internet altogether. Not that I'd enforce this or anything. Just so no one other than the parents can be liable when things go wrong. There's more and more evidence that internet access isn't healthy to have for children anyway.
I would've never learnt to program or learnt to speak English or learn about other cultures
thanks so much for being awesome like this, pulling the ladder when it no longer concerns you. so mature and brave
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
At glance this looks reasonable but how do you enforce that kids connection always goes through the parents control? You are just moving the verification point to another gate, it means that no anonymous connections are possible anymore to the entire Internet because we want to allow parents to control their kids. You want to use your friends Wi-Fi? Now that requires full identification so that we know that its not s…
No, the point was that the actual decision happens client side and under the control of the sysadmin (the parent). > You are just moving the verification point to another gate Yeah, the gate being the decision of legal entities of age, aka. adults. > You want to use your friends, Wi-Fi? That would still do whatever your parent decided for you. > Want to connect your can toilet to the internet? Whether the toilet can…
You're making the mistake of assuming that every kid has access to identified device and that device is under parent control. You can't make this assumption because that's not true.
It might be true for some middle class helicopter parents that have iPhones and time to manage and keep it under strict control but there are non-middle class kids out there who just use whatever device they can get their hands on and their parens neither have time nor ability to control that.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#206A question to the crypto nerds here - is there a way to prove that you are of age, but you can't be deanonymized even if the government, identity provider and the website itself collaborate to do it?
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
In principle, it is possible to make a privacy-preserving age check. Site/app asks "≥18?", device generates a UUID specifically for that [app/domain + device], the device passes that UUID to government database along with the "≥18?" question and the ID card info but not the app/domain, government database gives the answer and signs just the UUID and the answer and doesn't include any ID card info. Government doesn't…
In reality, the ones making such check will want extra capabilities 'just in case' as we observe now, or just go for simpler solution because it's cheaper. How does it prevent fingerprinting if you get access to both logs and try to time it? Even more so if you include already present tracking infrastructure, which as a government you can just request data from. It is possible to de-anonymize people based on aggregat…
> How does it prevent fingerprinting if you get access to both logs and try to time it? Even more so if you include already present tracking infrastructure, which as a government you can just request data from.
True, but as this problem exists without any ID at all*, I don't see how the addition of the ID cards makes any difference?
> It is possible to de-anonymize people based on aggregate data already, and this proposed solution just adds extra data points.
This is why I specified a "UUID specifically for that [app/domain + device]". Can't aggregate when each app/domain gets a different signed UUID.
> Legal systems aren't computer systems. This isn't a technical problem but a social/political one.
While true, the reverse also applies: computer systems are not legal systems.
I think many lawmakers' ignorance of this is to the detriment of everyone.
In this case, the social/political problem is: we want to stop kids accessing age-inappropriate material.
The options-space for doing this appears to be:
(0) give up
(1) require parents to limit their kids' behaviour (to which I say: "Have you met a kid? Do you remember being one?")
(2) require websites to age-rank appropriately (to which I say in a sarcastic tone of voice: "Gee, that worked soooooo well for GDPR")
(3) require operating systems to intermediate. Will this suck? Yes. Will it be buggy? Also yes. Will there be false positives and false negatives? Yes to both. Will it be a constant fight as kids keep finding loopholes? Indeed.
But you know what else? All that psych testing Facebook have used for evil, can also catch bugs and loopholes faster than kids can figure them out. A school full of kids can beat their parents at the security game because they have more time to spend on finding exploits than the parents have to spend keeping up, the reverse is true of the difference between kids and Google LLC etc.
It doesn't need to be perfect, the kids aren't a computer program.
What does need to be held to a high standard is making sure the OSes don't leak all over the place.
* to be specific, the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 is one of two reasons I left the UK, just look at how over-broad the "Internet connection records without a warrant" list is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#...
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only acceptable solution would be for apps and websites to simply include a recommended age. Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating. I'm afraid you'd get the cookie banner problem but way worse. Everyone that's not Meta/Google/Apple would immediately add a legal CYA "18+" age rating and s…
That's how it should be. Make the Internet 18+ by default and sites targeted at younger audiences can add a more detailed rating. Let people configure their devices however they like it. The whole problem with the regulation we have right now is that it assumes the Internet is for kids, and everything for adults must be hidden. When we really just should declare the whole Internet as 18+ and the sites for kids should…
I never thought about that and I find it might actually be the right way for a solution... I was just looking into the Google Play Store now: in Brazil apps need to have an age rating, facebook and instagram for example are 16+, but browsers like firefox, chrome, etc are rated for 'all ages', even though you can access the whole internet through them. If we actually did what you said and inverted the logic: restrict everything to 18+ and specifically mark what is allowed to under-18s it would make parental controls much more effective.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the point was that the actual decision happens client side and under the control of the sysadmin (the parent). > You are just moving the verification point to another gate Yeah, the gate being the decision of legal entities of age, aka. adults. > You want to use your friends, Wi-Fi? That would still do whatever your parent decided for you. > Want to connect your can toilet to the internet? Whether the toilet can…
You're making the mistake of assuming that every kid has access to identified device and that device is under parent control. You can't make this assumption because that's not true. It might be true for some middle class helicopter parents that have iPhones and time to manage and keep it under strict control but there are non-middle class kids out there who just use whatever device they can get their hands on and the…
That's a parent issue, the same as if their kid has a secret stash of cocaine or enjoys dancing in traffic.
No technical measure can fix stupid.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're making the mistake of assuming that every kid has access to identified device and that device is under parent control. You can't make this assumption because that's not true. It might be true for some middle class helicopter parents that have iPhones and time to manage and keep it under strict control but there are non-middle class kids out there who just use whatever device they can get their hands on and the…
That's a parent issue, the same as if their kid has a secret stash of cocaine or enjoys dancing in traffic. No technical measure can fix stupid.
That's not parents issue. That's why we go after people who sell or give drugs to kids. Is a serious offense, we don't wave our hands and say its parents problem and not drugging kids is a popular policy unlike drug enforcement for adults.