Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 1001 posts

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#581

Post by WorldPeas »

robomartin wrote: post #343
lenerdenator wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, what are the parents to do beyond restricting things? You find out some creep has been talking to Junior; do you talk to your local police department, state agency, or to the feds? We've never properly acted upon reports of predators grooming children by investigating them, charging them, holding trials, and handing down sentences on any sort of large scale. There's a patchwork of LEOs that have to hand…

> The thing is, what are the parents to do beyond restricting things? Well, I can't speak for parents (as in all parents). I can, however, tell you what we did. When two of my kids were young we gave them iPods. The idea was to load a few fun educational applications (I had written and published around 10 at the time). Very soon they asked for Clash of Clans to play for a couple of hours on Saturdays. We said that wa…

My parents took the same approach and it helped, but I will anecdotally point out that kids have played video games under covers for a while, even when I was young, I remember getting in trouble for playing this spyro game n' watch clone from mcdonalds at night, or gameboy with one of those lamps that plugged into the serial port. When I become a parent, I think I'd feel understanding of something like this, but would likely still only give them access to hardware like cell-enabled apple watches or DSes. The issue I take with modern games like CoC is that they are psychologically engineered to be mentally harmful, and push you to spend real money on fake things. I've seen many peers who were engaged in CoC as kids get into online gambling and sports gambling recently, it doesn't sit right.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#582

Post by Aurornis »

Galanwe wrote: post #449

Well there are technical solutions for this: blind signatures. I could generate my own key, have the government blind sign it upon verifying my identity, and then use my key to prove I'm an adult citizen, without anyone (even the signing government) know which key is mine. Any veryfying entity just need to know the government public key and check it signed my key.

The ID check laws are about matching an identity to a user account.

If the identity check was blind it wouldn't actually be an identity check. It would be "this person has access to an adult identity".

If there is truly no logging or centralization, there is no limit on how many times a single ID could be used.

So all it takes is one of those adult blind signatures to be leaked online and all the kids use it to verify their accounts. It's a blind process, so there's no way to see if it's happening.

Even if there was a block list, you would get older siblings doing it for all of their younger siblings' friends because there is no consequence. Or kids stealing their parents' signature and using it for all of their friends.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#583

Post by fuzzfactor »

trueismywork wrote: post #336
estimator7292 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are legally prohibited from marketing and selling certain products like tobacco and alcohol because they historically tried to . Parents are legally and socially expected to keep their kids away from tobacco and alcohol. You're breaking legal and social convention if you allow your kids to access dangerous drugs. Capitalist social media is exactly as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco. Somebody should be held…

So we should ban social media is what you're saying but not what OC is saying.

At least give it a try.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#584

Post by trinsic2 »

fartfeatures wrote: post #419
axus wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to lock up alcohol/cigarettes, a child should never have access. Internet usage is more like broadcast media, a child should have regular access. The positives and negatives of Internet usage are more extreme than broadcast media but less than alcohol/guns. The majority of people lack the skills to properly censor Internet without hovering over the child's shoulder full-time as you would with a gun. Be…

This is where Apple, Microsoft and Android need to step up. Indeed they already have in many ways with things being better than they used to be. There needs to be a strict (as in MDM level) parental control system. Furthermore there needs to be a "School Mode" which allows the devices to be used educationally but not as a distraction. This would work far better than a ban.

I dunno man. IMHO, kids should not have access to devices of any kind until the brain develops. Im not sure what that number is, but lets say its 15. At that point, we as parents need to be role models and let kids make mistakes. There is this whole idea that if you focus too much on security, you open the door for increased risk. I feel this applies to this situation[0].

When I was a kid, when I reached a certain age, 13 I think, there was nothing my parents good could do to stop me from learning from my own mistakes. I think using blanket laws and tech to curb internet behavior is just going to backfire.

[0]: https://news.clemson.edu/the-safer-you-feel-the-less-safely-...

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#585

Post by stainablesteel »

this is a broader parenting problem, the state doesn't need to do this

politicians are interested in it because they're begging for some way to censor the internet, which would actually be even worse for parenting because now it prevents children from ever learning to be responsible with these highly addictive platforms

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#586

Post by SecretDreams »

EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #558
SecretDreams wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITT are a lot* of tech workers who made their money as a cog in the system poisoning the internet that future generations would have to swim in. I wonder if toxic waste companies also tell the parents it's strictly on them to keep their kids out of the lakes that are poisoned, but once flowed cleanly? We live in a shared world with shared responsibilities. If you are working on a product, or ever did work on a produc…

Age verification tech companies are lobbying heavily for governments to legally require their services. The proposed "solutions" are about funneling money into the hands of other tech companies and shady groups, while violating user privacy. If anything, we should be banning the collection of any age related information to access social media and more mature content. We need companies to respect privacy, rather than…

If anything, we should be preventing young people from being exposed to the version of the internet that currently exists until the tech companies that made it this way offer a solution. I am all ears if you have an alternative that big tech can implement to ensure this is the case while they are given the task of cleaning up the mess they've made?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#587

Post by jajuuka »

I feel like the ending undermines the whole piece. Throwing your hands up and going "we should do nothing" isn't really a solution. If a compromise exists I think it's adding age requests on device setup. There wouldn't be any verification but it could be used as a way to limit access to content globally. Content provides would just need a simple API to check if the age range fits and move right along.

This puts more onus on parents and guardians to ensure their child's devices are set up correctly. The system wouldn't be perfect and people using something like Gentoo would be able to work around it, but I think it helps address the concerns. A framework would need to be created for content providers to enforce their own rating system but I don't think it's an impossible task. It obviously wouldn't cover someone not rating content operating out of Romania, but should be part of the accepted risk on an open internet.

Personally I do agree with the "do nothing" stance, but I don't think it's going to hold up among the wider public. The die is cast and far too many average people are supporting moves like this. So the first defense should be to steer that conversation in a better way instead of stonewalling.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#588

Post by chrishare »

gigel82 wrote: post #484
antitoxic wrote: post #390

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

Where can we learn more about your architecture? Someone brought up the need for device attestation for trust purposes (to avoid token smuggling for example). That would surely defeat the purpose (and make things much much worse for freedom overall). If you have a solution that doesn't require device attestation, how does that solve the smuggling issue (are tokens time-gated, is there a limit to token generation, oth…

It's this I believe: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#589

Post by mrcwinn »

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

Do you have kids?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#590

Post by Aurornis »

EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #498
antitoxic wrote: post #390

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

According to the EU Identity Wallet's documentation, the EU's planned system requires highly invasive age verification to obtain 30 single use, easily trackable tokens that expire after 3 months. It also bans jailbreaking/rooting your device, and requires GooglePlay Services/IOS equivalent be installed to "prevent tampering". You have to blindly trust that the tokens will not be tracked, which is a total no-go for pr…

Thanks for posting this.

The inherent problem with all zero knowledge identity solutions is that they also prevent any of the safeguards that governments want for ID checking.

A true zero knowledge ID check with blind signatures wouldn't work because it would only take a single leaked ID for everyone to authenticate their accounts with the same leaked ID. So the providers start putting in restrictions and logging and other features that defeat the zero knowledge part that everyone thought they were getting.

Post reply on HN