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Never Give Them Your Face

nevergivethemyourface.com

351–360 of 468 posts

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#351

This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch p…

Imo it definitely has to do with politicians and governments trying to appear strong on the topic of protecting kids from the harms of social media. I also believe a lot of it is well intentioned, albeit poorly executed

I'm with you on the well-intentioned aspect.

But it's not a question of poor execution -- there is simply no way to execute this. There is no way to achieve the goal (age-restricting websites) without identity verification. There are any number of half solutions that will solve 80% of the problem, but to move the needle past that requires identity verification. Even then, as the article points out, we only move to 90%.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#352
post #288

> They are built to know who you are: your name, your date of birth, your document number, your face. This is not age verification at all. It is forced identity tracking. This doesn't have to be the case. https://www.w3.org/TR/digital-credentials/ seems a sensible system where you can have a single identity provider (hopefully someone you trust) who can then verify things like "is this person over 18?" without givin…

A sensible system would require no trust. You could trust no provider would collude or be hacked ever. But to prevent governments to demand records requires records not exist.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s been building for a while, and (in my opinion) because it’s not a major traffic generating topic on builder focused sites like HN. The most proximate domino was the Australian social media ban. Australia was already a country known to experiment with ways to deal with social media - see the news fee they imposed on platforms. Behind that was the build up of negative outcomes from social media for kids, a…

> The harms are not something I tend to find actively discussed on HN; Define actively. They are discussed often. In discussions of age restrictions especially.

Any time in the past 5 years would be a guide line.

I work in the safety side of things, and I've seen the difference in conversations in comment threads here.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimates the protection Tor provides. We have seen multiple cases of people getting caught on there, and CIA probably owns half the exit nodes anyways.

> We have seen multiple cases of people getting caught on there as far as i am aware, no one has been caught due to something technical in relation to tor. it's always something dumb like logging into an email that has the person's real name in it, using a credit card, leaving javascript on, or otherwise making some opsec failure.

There is another angle not a lot of people consider. There was a Defcon video I recall watching from 10-15 years ago where the speaker referenced a case where police managed to arrest someone because the Tor traffic on the network (maybe a university) was so unusual as a one time event at a specific location, the police managed to tie the individual to specific Tor activity. The speaker's conclusion was essentially we should all be using Tor to create and normalise a higher volume of Tor traffic which can in turn help protect other Tor user's anonymity.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#355
post #141
post #27

Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane ?

I think it is great that people point out LLM generated articles here on HN. Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak. Maybe I am getting worn out of all LLM content... So, please, list the indicators and telltale signs from the specific article or blog post (like others have done here already). At least I would appreciate it a lot.

> Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak.

Just read a few fiction books written in 2026 in Amazon Kindle Unlimited. Your brain will be trained to recognize AI-Slop Speak in No Time.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have seen multiple cases of people getting caught on there as far as i am aware, no one has been caught due to something technical in relation to tor. it's always something dumb like logging into an email that has the person's real name in it, using a credit card, leaving javascript on, or otherwise making some opsec failure.

There is another angle not a lot of people consider. There was a Defcon video I recall watching from 10-15 years ago where the speaker referenced a case where police managed to arrest someone because the Tor traffic on the network (maybe a university) was so unusual as a one time event at a specific location, the police managed to tie the individual to specific Tor activity. The speaker's conclusion was essentially w…

i believe that case is this one from 2013: https://www.informationweek.com/cyber-resilience/fbi-traces-...

"Reading the criminal complaint, it seems that the FBI got itself a list of Harvard users that accessed the Tor network, and went through them one by one to find the one who sent the threat, [...]"

"The FBI didn't have to break Tor; they just used conventional police mechanisms to get Kim to confess," Schneier wrote. "Tor didn't break; Kim did.""

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#357

I have yet to receive my federal tax refund because I submitted my taxes through a preparation service and, thinking that physical checks were still an option (the tax software didn't tell me otherwise), I did not give the federal government an ACH account number for direct deposit. The IRS then told me I'd have to open an account to update/provide direct deposit info, which in turn requires me to register with ID.me…

When given the option (like this case), I recommend Login.gov over ID.me.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#358
post #27

Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane ?

I think the trouble is the LLM is quite catchy and so gets more upvotes. We are losing to the clankers!

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using Facebook. It's really that simple. Found the guy who's never heard of "shadow profiles." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile

They didn't say delete your FB account. They just said to stop using it.

You use Facebook whether you use Facebook, or not. That's how shadow profiles work.

This has nothing to do with deleting accounts.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#360
post #40

At Disneyland, there are separate park entrance lanes that don't use facial recognition software. I like that I can opt-out passively there. At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out. I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.

Yup. Most people are going to say "I have nothing to hide" and go with the flow. The ones who don't are signalling that perhaps they do have something to hide.

best anonymization would have been "hide in plain sight". If you really are a perpetrator: you would use a mask to perform the said fellony.

So face is just on factor: now they look at gait, and other body parts that can serve for identification.

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