Besides the page header and footer, the post has 0 use of the word "Android", which feels telling of Google's approach these days.
Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
191–200 of 549 posts
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#192Earlier 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…
> Government doesn't know what you're looking at, website doesn't know your ID. But then the government knows your location at any point of time and how often you use websites requiring the age check. Also, if your device is configured to do it automatically, a child can also follow this verification.
> But then the government knows your location at any point of time and how often you use websites requiring the age check.
Not as described. There's no location info in that path, and the signed statement of that UUID passing the age check does not need to be re-signed because I've not given any consideration to expiry.
(Should I consider expiry? It's not like people age backwards?)
> Also, if your device is configured to do it automatically, a child can also follow this verification.
Yes, if that device has been associated with a government ID and also the government ID signing process fails to make use the things we've already got on-device like how my phone reads my fingerprint to know I'm me and can store copies of some forms of government ID (in some places but not where I live, Apple Wallet apparently only supports some US states, Japan, Greece, and UAE).
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Each individual proof is zero knowledge, but downloading a _bunch_ of them is an indicator, yes. There's no real way to work around this with the current ZKP scheme. I'd argue ZKP is, in theory, the least worse option of all current age verification scheme. My personal opinion is that age verification itself is a bad idea, but if we're going to go ahead with it, I'd much rather we use ZKP for it than the current mess…
So the government would impose a maximum limit on the number of porn sites you can visit each day?
Not necessarily, but it would be difficult to justify why you need to access 1000 porn sites every day, I guess?
The point is that if you build a service that sells age verification tokens, you are doing something illegal. And if you start doing something illegal by gathering said tokens with your own identity, maybe it's not the most clever way to do something illegal?
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#194I find myself stuck on the fence with age checks. Companies have show that they are incapable or unwilling to address the problems they cause. And market forces are not working to correct things. It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working. Just observe the world around you to know it’s a non starter. This is where regulation is supposed to come in. At the same time, c…
Children here are a distraction. Any harm these companies are causing to children is also being inflicted on adults. The correct solution is to end the harmful behavior for all, not set up required identity verification.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#195Earlier 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…
Someone would complain that without ID verification kids would be able to sneak onto the regular Internet and therefore we should eliminate privacy on the regular Internet, just like they're doing now.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not completely true. With ZKP, if you make a business out of reselling tokens you get with your own identity, eventually they will see that you use orders of magnitude more tokens than normal people. So with ZKP it's more difficult to cheat. Not impossible, just less accessible.
They're not ZK if they can do that
Of course they are. The whole point of ZKP is that whoever gives you the token cannot link it to your identity. So you can get a token with your own identity and sell it to someone else, and nobody will know...
... unless you get thousands of tokens every day and sell them on a website, where suddenly you start leaking information about yourself everywhere. ZKP still did its job: it's not the tokens that link to your identity, it's your behaviour.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#197I'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…
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 connect to the network, is the decision of the network administrator, and toilets don't contain UAs, so that wouldn't even have software on them, where you could configure such behaviour.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big concern around age verification is that some people will be locked out because they can't prove their age. Your solution here has the same flaw, I think. If the algorithm thinks I'm underage, I'm locked out.
being locked out = less profit = firing management by shareholders it will solve by consumers, don't worry
The number of people who are marginalised is... marginal. By definition it doesn't have a sensible impact on profit. That's precisely why it is a problem to be marginalised.
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to use a service that is age restricted either by law or the company providing it how else would you do it? It's the same IRL. I don't like it as well and we certainly lived through the wild wild west times in the 90s and 00s but the more something gets economical important the more scrutiny it gets. Maybe we just need something new.
Well these kind of laws are trying to legislate technology into existence; we don’t have a means to do it, yet “we demand for the technology to exist through ‘reasonable methods’, now get to work.” If that’s the nearly infinite wiggle room we’re playing with then I’d say what about Adult and Child versions of phones? You have to flash your ID to the clerk to buy an adult one, like buying cigarettes at a gas station,…
We already have a version of the child phone: it's parental supervision.
When I was a kid there was no TV in my bedroom nor a computer. Everything I watched or did online was on full display in the family room. What changed in the modern home where that's not the case? Are kids glued to their phones because their parents are too?
Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
#200I'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…
Many years ago I worked a technical support job for Xbox services, and the amount of calls about "unauthorized charges" was obscene. Xbox provided parental controls, but it required the parent to set up their child's account themselves, and many couldn't be bothered. I imagine the same thing will happen here...
And people give their children cigarettes and liquor, that's bad as well. But that's the responsibility of being an adult. If the adult is deemed not worthy of raising children, society has already established a process of dealing with that too.