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

neilzone.co.uk

191–200 of 645 posts

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

#191

Earlier 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.

You're lucky to get a "reject" or "select some" button at all. Now I typically see "ACCEPT ALL COOKIES" or "Customize Preferences"

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

#192
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 saw some research awhile ago that 60% of the time, "reject cookies" is ignored.

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

#193
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative being to bend over and grab our ankles with both hands the moment the scummy ad-tech industry requests our data? Sorry mate, the GDPR is there for a bloody good reason; and legit companies obey the law.

Yes because of the GDPR, there aren’t still two trillion dollar+ market cap ad Tech companies. But at least we have cookie banners everywhere.

More pity to those who (for some bizarre reason) voluntarily choose to interact with those ad-tech companies.

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

#194
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Ask them how to copy it somewhere else To be fair, at least Android and presumably iOS grant apps by default no access to your files in modern versions. The only way to get, e. G., an attachment downloaded via Thunderbird to a PC or another app is the share dialogue. A user does not access to the isolated app storage by default on an unrooted Android phone. For better or worse the young user is actually making the…

That's exactly the problem. Digital natives have, by and large, grown up with computing devices which try their best to be the opposite of general-purpose: their skills are siloed to the few apps they rely on, and e.g. files, keyboard shortcuts, the command prompt are not part of the "API" they learned.

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

#195
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The standard should be that devices ask whether the user is a minor during setup, and make that available as an is_minor boolean to all apps and websites. Children's devices are almost always set up by parents, and the setting can be protected by a parental PIN code. This method is effective while being completely private and local.

Though I can't take credit for the idea. It was proposed by the European Democratic Party.[0]

[0] https://democrats.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Protecting-C...

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

#196
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 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.

Look at the suspension on a model T. That thing was built for the dirt wagon roads of the time. People on youtube actually off road the thing today.

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

#197
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[ redacted ]

I'm sorry, the "Karen" drove onto your private road to interrogate your kid? These things don't happen on a liberal/conservative axis in my experience. I've lived all over the place, though not as much with kids, and have had none of these issues (including having mixed race kids who look much more like their other parent than me). You really need to look at why you're living where you do.

A "private road" typically means one not maintained by the city. I live on one, but so do two other households, who have equal right to drive on it.

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

#198
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 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 think he is referring to how some have an "Accept cookies" and a cookie's settings, but to reject cookies you have to open a separate dialog box. I agree, and I think it is so wild that people would give their actual email to random sites.

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

#199
post #53

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.

Depending on where you live in the country mud is a certain default state.

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

#200
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age verification proposal of the EU tries to do that, the government knows you used age verification (and I think the rough number of times you used it), but they don't know when or where you used it. https://ageverification.dev/av-doc-technical-specification/d...

I can't imagine countries with such strict speech laws, for example, would be willing to build a system that is technically incapable of linking the person visiting a sire and the site requesting verification. This proposal may have been updated since I read it previously, so I could be wrong now, but it didn't read as a true zero-knowledge proof as key steps in the flow still required a level of trusting the governm…

The EU has more freedom of speech than the US, the US has just a different way of punishment.

It’s much easier in the US to lose your job for what you say as in the EU and in the US the consequences of losing your job are more severe if you don’t have enough money so you can afford to lose it.

US freedom of speech comes with a price tag that puts the censor inside your brain.

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