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Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#431

Post by DSMan195276 »

1dom wrote: post #299
account42 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And instead of an age you could even make the indication about what is potentially objectionable so that parents can choose when to allow their kids to see what - and adults can also choose to avoid certain things.

I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them. I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset. I'm in my mid 30's. When I was very young I remember my Dad semi-regularly having to email or even fax off permission sl…

> I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them.

> I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset.

I don't think that's a fair assessment personally, rather you've missed a key detail that things are significantly more complicated than they used to be, it's not just an 'effort' issue. There is no universal "user is age X" setting that applies to everything everywhere, rather everything has a different system and pretty much all of them are terrible in various different ways.

I'm very tech savvy and I still struggled just to set up a Microsoft/XBox account for my daughter so that we could play some computer games together. Access to all the different age rating settings is spread across something like three different apps and websites and in my experience they don't even all work consistently. That experience is also not dissimilar from the experience with other types of accounts. For people I know who are less tech savvy it honestly doesn't matter how much time they put into it, eventually they give up and turn off age ratings because something isn't work and even if there's a solution it would take them hours to figure out.

Point being, if the existing tools were much better I don't think we would be having this kind of conversation.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#432

Post by klondike_klive »

HDBaseT wrote: post #425
wongarsu wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Website generates a random nounce, the government offers to sign the json { over_18: true, nounce: [inserted_here] }. That signing is coupled to you being signed in, or scanning your passport via nfc or whatever That significantly reduces the leaked information: the service doesn't receive any information who you are, and the government doesn't know what service you use. They can collude, but that does not reveal mor…

The word nounce is used to describe a sex offender, at least in the UK.

Specifically a child molester.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#433

Post by RachelF »

qurren wrote: post #263
RandomGerm4n wrote: post #154

I'm fundamentally opposed to age verification because it usually leads to mandatory account creation no matter how privacy friendly the age verification process itself may be. It's already extremely annoying that, for example, on YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account. Furthermore, the whole thing also reinforces monopolies. Once you've verified your age on one platform, the barrier to switch…

The part I'm most opposed to is requiring a full KYC, using "verifying age" as an excuse. My Gmail account has been active for >18 years, that should be enough proof.

They should not call it "age verification" - it is actually identity verification.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#434

Post by [deleted] »

izend wrote: post #237
RandomGerm4n wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is quite simple. You just don't verify it. The point isn’t to verify the age but to set the age on the device itself. If the parents set the age on the cell phone or computer, that setting is then used as the basis. The operating systems can be configured so that only the device administrator can change the age. Systemd already has a field for storing the age, which programs can read. If the child doesn’t…

Are you a parent? I have personally used the parental controls on Android, iOS and ChromeOS and to be honest they are terrible. Issues with syncing changes, the terrible UX for parental access control (iOS...), issues around audit/access logs, issues around prompting the parent for access. I am honestly shocked that Apple known for its polished experience hasn't been forced by angry parents. My daughter's school actu…

[deleted]

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#435

Post by cindyllm »

[deleted] wrote: post #434
izend wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a parent? I have personally used the parental controls on Android, iOS and ChromeOS and to be honest they are terrible. Issues with syncing changes, the terrible UX for parental access control (iOS...), issues around audit/access logs, issues around prompting the parent for access. I am honestly shocked that Apple known for its polished experience hasn't been forced by angry parents. My daughter's school actu…

[deleted]

[dead]

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#437

Post by KPGv2 »

trollbridge wrote: post #232
1718627440 wrote: post #197

Earlier 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…

There are definitely toilets that have UAs.

all toilets are UA assuming the first word stands for a relative orientation, and the second stands for a slang word for butt

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#438

Post by baby_souffle »

ben_w wrote: post #238
baby_souffle wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not as described. There's no location info in that path Ip address and general time of day will tell you a lot about location. Not street level, but country or state level. > UUID passing the age check does not need to be re-signed because I've not given any consideration to expiry. So as soon as any one uuid is leaked, it becomes plausible for any child to bypass the gates until the uuid is manually revoked?

> So as soon as any one uuid is leaked, it becomes plausible for any child to bypass the gates until the uuid is manually revoked? How? Phones are already locked down pretty hard. Anything like this would need to be in something secured at the OS level just to stop signatures getting leaked between apps. If you're thinking "kid roots device, replaces OS entirely", that's not the problem of the manufacturer of the OS…

> How? Phones are already locked down pretty hard

But never well enough, it seems.

If you can't revoke the token then I'll just sell mine to whomever needs it.

Kids will beg/borrow/steal their parents / older siblings ... etc.

The "harden the device, bake in controls that are difficult to circumvent and managed by not-the-primary-device-user" approach is _very_ similar to DRM. All that does is punish the innocent.

I have never once had VLC tell me that the mkv file I just opened can't be played because I'm not in the right region or because my screen is too old to support encryption. I have had family learn the hard way that DRM is not in their best interest, though. Now they just ask me for the movie on a pen drive when I visit next :).

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#439

Post by baby_souffle »

ben_w wrote: post #358
baby_souffle wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can’t work because it creates a market for people that have an ID that cleared gates to lease/borrow to those that can’t.

It cannot work *perfectly*, but unlike most crypto stuff, it doesn't have to (at least, that part doesn't need to). It's a social/political problem, not a technical one. The goal doesn't even need to be to make a completely perfect, impossible to circumvent, barrier for all minors; all this needs to do is just make it equally difficult for a minor to get adult (for whatever definition thereof) content online as it is…

> (for whatever definition thereof)

See, that's why this can't be solved technically.

Pornhub has a decent amount of sexual health material on it so there's an argument to be made for allowing teens access to at least parts of it.

> privacy being the bit which has to be done perfectly.

> It cannot work perfectly

So we agree that this is going to end poorly?

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#440

Post by xg15 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #211

Well, the API itself seems fairly well designed from a privacy perspective. It only shares age ranges, not specific ages, and only if you allow it. The data is also fuzzed to prevent an app from determining your exact birth date, and it's all tied in to the parental control system.[1] The problem remains though that, since the laws this feature was created to comply with put the onus on Google to verify the user's ag…

Interesting that Google offers a method "age verification by email address" that seems to come close to the popular "my account is already more than 18 years old" argument. Only that in this case, they check on which website the account is used, which comes over even more horrible from a privacy perspective.

Also, the German translation is unintentionally hilarious. They seem to wildly switch between formal and informal pronouns depending on whether the paragraph is about the reader being above 18 years or below.

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