Age verification

[Akane Nacht]

7 hours ago, animats said:

Should SL do this?

Nope, they'd drive people away. If it was required by law, then my days in SL would be over, simple as that. I'm not sharing my govt-issued ID with any overseas company. 

[Quistess Alpha]

4 hours ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Amazon --- they are touchy about adult stuff. So far AWS already kicked off a couple of MMORPGs from their servers since some action show adult matter.

Odd that they are tolerating SL though. . .

[Chaser Zaks]

47 minutes ago, xxVi3perxx said:

Tracephone phones are cheap 40 bucks to buy the smart phone up to 30 bucks a month for phone plan with 3GB data limit if I don't know if its open to where you reside at. 

That'd be a big expense in my disability check. $40 for something I'd use only for SMS like 2 to 3 times a month seems like unwise spending to me.

[Alwin Alcott]

5 hours ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

I It's opt-in and not required,

thank god ...

i been verified by LL at least 3 or 4 times past years, and seem they dumped all that in the trash after a few months. Even Tillia seems to forget given info on regular base ... the only thing they don't know by now is the color of my shorts i wear.
The day it gets mandatory( usually just a matter of time) it's my last day here.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Sid Nagy]

No ID copy for anything but serious RL business, like opening a bank account, register a new car, buy a house.
For the rest people can ask my ID in person, but never ever copy my ID.

Why?

Because with an ID (copy) you can do serious RL business, like opening a bank account, register a new car, buy a house.
I can't control how serious LL (or any other company) is in storing \ destroying the copies of ID's after verifying.
 

[Alwin Alcott]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

No ID copy for anything but serious RL business, like opening a bank account, register a new car, buy a house.
For the rest people can ask my ID in person, but never ever copy my ID.

Why?

Because with an ID (copy) you can do serious RL business, like opening a bank account, register a new car, buy a house.
I can't control how serious LL (or any other company) is in storing \ destroying the copies of ID's after verifying.
 

for any other than official representatives of the State, like police, courts, local governments, you should erase/blind all numbers from the ID copy, there are special "masks"for making copies with a phone that hide those.
For ány other use, the asker has enough with seeing the pic if it's you.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Rowan Amore]

9 hours ago, Chaser Zaks said:

That'd be a big expense in my disability check. $40 for something I'd use only for SMS like 2 to 3 times a month seems like unwise spending to me.

I actually got a Tracfone for my mother who rarely uses one but wanted one.  It cost me $50.  Included was 1 year subscription, 1000 texts, 1000 minutes of talk and 1G of data.  For $50/yr, it's cheaper than a house phone.  Adding texts is $5 for 1000 and $10 for another G of data.  

[yestothis]

12 hours ago, Chaser Zaks said:

If age verification is limited down to a government issued ID such as state ID, drivers license, or military ID, I'd be "ok" with it, not too happy about it.

However, if they require cellphones, which quite a few sites are doing with 2FA or some form of verification, I am absolutely against it. I do not have a cellphone, I have VoIP number(but I can't use this because VoIP is blacklisted way too often). I cannot afford a cellphone plan because I am on disability. I know I am not the only one who is in such a situation.

However, if age verification was added into Second Life, I would expect it to do something else such as lowering the minimum age requirement as well. Age verification would be pointless and possibly cause people to leave out of frustration(either because they can't verify a specific ID, or they don't have a ID, or other issues). That number has to be made up some how by increasing the number of possible residents, and since a lot of other virtual worlds allow anyone above the age of 13 to join while restricting those under the age of 16 to general rated regions.

I am quite aware that the minimum age requirement is a controversial subject, but I am looking at the bigger picture of user acquisition and competing in a increasingly competitive market. Adult will still be adult, and only people over the age of 18 will go there. And people already lie about their age, if they were given access to G rated regions, it may actually have the effect of reducing under aged users in moderate and adult regions.

If you are on disability, you can get a free cell phone from many companies. Just saying  

 

edit to clarify that you get a free cell phone and service. Please use google. 

Edited September 22, 2021 by yestothis

[Lindal Kidd]

2FA is great in theory. In reality, it has serious flaws.  For example:

• I sign into Google on my smartphone. To authenticate me, Google sends a verification code...TO MY SMARTPHONE! If I were a thief who'd stolen the phone, I'd be right in, no problem.
• I am forced to have my phone with me at all times. I'll need it to receive the verification code whenever I sign in to a website on my desktop or on another computer.  I've lost count of how many times I've had to trudge up four flights of stairs to hunt up my phone to sign into some web site.

This proposed use of a picture ID and a selfie also seems to have big potential problems. The primary one for me seems to be the "liveness and likeness" comparison of the selfie and the ID picture. I have yet to see a Department of Motor Vehicles that can take a picture of a person that looks anything like the person actually looks (I think they must have special distorting cameras or something). Plus, after the license has lived in your pocketbook for a few years, it looks even less human. The computer algorithm is going to look at the scanned photo, then the selfie, shake its head and say "Nope, not the same person. In fact, it's an Abyssinian Shrew. Application denied".

[Jaylinbridges]

6 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Nope, not the same person. In fact, it's an Abyssinian Shrew. Application denied".

I agree, here's my DMV photo:

[Arielle Popstar]

8 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

2FA is great in theory. In reality, it has serious flaws.  For example:

• I sign into Google on my smartphone. To authenticate me, Google sends a verification code...TO MY SMARTPHONE! If I were a thief who'd stolen the phone, I'd be right in, no problem.
• I am forced to have my phone with me at all times. I'll need it to receive the verification code whenever I sign in to a website on my desktop or on another computer.  I've lost count of how many times I've had to trudge up four flights of stairs to hunt up my phone to sign into some web site.

This proposed use of a picture ID and a selfie also seems to have big potential problems. The primary one for me seems to be the "liveness and likeness" comparison of the selfie and the ID picture. I have yet to see a Department of Motor Vehicles that can take a picture of a person that looks anything like the person actually looks (I think they must have special distorting cameras or something). Plus, after the license has lived in your pocketbook for a few years, it looks even less human. The computer algorithm is going to look at the scanned photo, then the selfie, shake its head and say "Nope, not the same person. In fact, it's an Abyssinian Shrew. Application denied".

The part that does cause me concern with selfies is the idea that the only companies that haven't been hacked yet are the ones that don't know they have been hacked. I'm not so ok with the idea that it is just a matter of time and chance before all those selfies are being spread around the internet.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The part that does cause me concern with selfies is the idea that the only companies that haven't been hacked yet are the ones that don't know they have been hacked. I'm not so ok with the idea that it is just a matter of time and chance before all those selfies are being spread around the internet.

One would hope they are not retained after verification is complete .. but that's never how that works.

[Innula Zenovka]

On 9/21/2021 at 9:55 PM, animats said:

There's been discussion of age verification for SL recently, so SL could get on Twitch. Roblox is preparing to do it.

Age Verification comes in two stages. First, an ID document check, and then a selfie match. On the Roblox app, users start by scanning their ID card, driver’s license, or passport. Roblox uses advanced image processing technology to validate the document’s legitimacy.

From there, the user is asked to capture a selfie to check for “liveness” and “likeness.” Liveness ensures that the person is a living, breathing individual taking the selfie (rather than just a static image of a person), and likeness ensures that the person in the selfie is the same person as the face on the ID document. The entire process is automated and usually takes seconds to get a result after images are captured.

It will be available globally in over 180 countries on both mobile and desktop for anyone 13 years of age or older with a government-issued ID or passport. 

Verification will initially be required for creators and voice users.

Roblox is mostly kids, but they want more adults. This is how they're going to keep them separate.

Tencent has been doing this for a while now. They validate against China's national ID. That's how the time limits on gaming for kids works.

Not sure if it's a good idea, but it seems to be the coming thing from the big players.

Should SL do this?

Why should SL need to?

If I want to do something online that's age-restricted by law in my country -- gamble, for example -- then between them the licenced casino sites, their payment processors, and my credit card issuers, are all perfectly capable of performing the legally necessary due diligence without any great ado or inconvenience for me, and with serious financial consequences for them if they don't get it right,  before I'm able to open and fund an account with the site. 

I remember the fuss we had about age verification before we could visit Zindra when Adult was first introduced as a category (before that the two categories were PG and Anything Goes) and it was pretty obvious that, whatever they were telling LL about the checks they were doing, whoever purported to do be doing the age verification was either lying to SL about the nature of their checks and were simply confirming with a credit reference agency that I had a current credit card and was registered to vote (neither of which would be possible were I under 18) or they must have been unlawfully accessing the DVLA or Passport Authority's computer systems that I sometimes had to access for my then job, so I was all too aware of who could access them directly and how long it took for them to reply (I assume they were simply lying to LL about what their age verification services involved).

Why isn't that sufficient for any other purposes?    Tilia know I have a valid UK credit card and bank account, and so do PayPal.    That should tell them everything anyone needs to know about my age, I would have thought.

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by Innula Zenovka

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

37 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Tilia know I have a valid UK credit card and bank account, and so do PayPal.    That should tell them everything anyone needs to know about my age,

^^^ This. Thrice.

Ok, so, a minor could in theory borrow a credit card, or borrow an id document, and get themselves verified, which is to some extent adult behaviour anyway.. I'm probably going to raise an Ire-storm for what I'm going to say next, but if somebody is capable of passing themselves off as an adult to the extent that they pass all the "normal" checks and those in their vicinity don't raise an eyebrow or three, why not treat them as an adult and let them ogle tights and oars?

 

I think the craze for verification is getting out of hand, my library started off with a bar-coded library card, now they insist I have to enter a pin in order to be able to use that card... wheres it going to end?

 

Emo Phillips - "I went into a library in the Bronx and the Librarian said I had to prove I came from the neighborhood - so I shot her"

Edited September 23, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

21 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I sign into Google on my smartphone. To authenticate me, Google sends a verification code...TO MY SMARTPHONE! If I were a thief who'd stolen the phone, I'd be right in, no problem.

They'll want you to have two phones next...

[Bree Giffen]

The Roblox identification system is probably using an A.I. to verify the selfies. I wonder if someone can use the website This Person Does Not Exist to make a fake ID and then use the Deep Nostalgia website to bring that fake person to life and fool the system.

[Coffee Pancake]

20 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

The Roblox identification system is probably using an A.I. to verify the selfies. I wonder if someone can use the website This Person Does Not Exist to make a fake ID and then use the Deep Nostalgia website to bring that fake person to life and fool the system.

I'm hoping for a fake ID and selfie that defeats the system using steganography. 

[Extrude Ragu]

SecondLife has managed to survive for 18 years without needing users to jump through these intrusive hoops and SecondLife can survive another 18 more.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

SecondLife has managed to survive for 18 years without needing users to jump through these intrusive hoops and SecondLife can survive another 18 more.

 

Guess you missed the part where we did have age verification.

[Theresa Tennyson]

Roblox would be trying to keep foxes out of the henhouse; Second Life would be trying to keep chickens out of the fox den. Whole different set of motivations.

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Roblox would be trying to keep foxes out of the henhouse; Second Life would be trying to keep chickens out of the fox den. Whole different set of motivations.

Wouldn't it make more sense to say trying to keep the rooster out of the chicken coup? 🤔  Hens don't need roosters to lay eggs. Roosters are only needed if you want chicks (fertilized eggs) and the fox will get one in the end no matter what you do if it's hungry enough.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

 @Soft Linden spotted in the wild ?

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

 @Soft Linden spotted in the wild ?

Wait, wait.... Soft is foxy? And no one sent me the memo?!?! Heads are gonna roll! 

[Lindal Kidd]

On 9/23/2021 at 10:55 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

I'm hoping for a fake ID and selfie that defeats the system using steganography. 

You mean selfies that can write like a stegosaurus? How is that even possible?

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

You mean selfies that can write like a stegosaurus? How is that even possible?

steganography is really more focused on hiding data in an image for cryptographic purposes, however similar techniques can be used to present one thing to a human observer and something else entirely to the AI doing the validation (because AI don't see images they way we do, they see the raw math), this could be used to generate a pair of garbage images that always pass the automated tests used by the verification service yet look like a real ID / selfie pair to a human observer.