What Happened To The Age Verification?

Filed under: society

9 May

Gods know that I am not sure if writing this is a wise idea. It is like calling a sleeping demon from the bottom of the lamp. But Nicholaz passed the question and… *sigh* … let's hope for the best.

Really, what happened to the age verification?

Half a year ago, the grid was burning in fires of evil words and heavy thoughts. As always, when all the fuel was burnt, tide rolled back and other things came to attention. We got back to our personal dramas, fun and shopping.

I have no inside information so this is just my humble guess. It seems that age verification is at the stage both Linden Lab and most of the residents were silently hoping for: status quo in the middle of nothing. Both sides know that nobody needs age verification, not even if it was not causing so much trouble. And while there is no pressure from the outside there is no reason to move. There are some dead letters in the SQL bases but we're all moving freely around, have our games and toys. Nobody questions Aristotle's integrity while they are far away from the grid, and occasional teen on the main grid silly enough to be spotted is efficiently teleported where the rest of kids are.

Speaking of which… [digresion] Couple of months ago a teen had a problem signing in, one of those regular problems when system cannot recognize a new created account. Kid tried to reach the support but it was down. So he registered new account, this time on the main grid, rezzed on Orientation Island, came to the mentor and said his age. He got Linden's attention in a minute, and got his regular account ASAP. One have to admire the idea how to get support immediately. [/digression]

So, if we are to be asked, status quo is just fine forever. But there is a third side. There is the outer world.

At the moment when some bored enthusiastic and clueless journalist try to grab some attention and bring up the subject again with some bizzare cartoon in his/her own production, things will have to move again. Freaks will ask questions and tell stories nobody of us could believe in. Linden Lab can pull the good old "we're in the middle of implementing it but we are experiencing some technical difficulties" excuse, save their asses (which is fine) and buy some more time. But that is just buying time, not a solution. Or they can have a better card in the sleeve and steer the process in some other direction that might have a better ending point. Hopefully, they will have that card.

Thing is, it is not only Robin's or Linden Lab's job to prepare the ground for the next round of this crazy game. It would be nice to see that, next time when an outer attack come, fuel we burn each other with, be ignited under ambitious journalist's and bigot's feet. Or is it only my hope? What can the community do against the common enemy?

If you like this story, share it with the rest of the world. Thanks.

18 Responses for "What Happened To The Age Verification?"

Peter Stindberg May 9th, 2008 at 5:51 pm 1
Nothing. At least if we don’t want a cozy little plain vanilla SL.

You know that someone with enough determination - and that is what a journalist is supposed to have - WILL find places and actions that might seem perverted/sick/weird/bizarre/liberal/debaucherous/whatever to the “moral majority”.

And you also know that we can’t educate every SL resident, or even only those in perceivedly unnormal activities, to watch out for media set-ups.

So if someone wants to make a smut&filth story about SL, he’ll succeed. All we could possibly do is respond with “So what? Our world, our imagination! Take it or leave it!”
dandellion May 10th, 2008 at 12:07 am 2
Sure that one can come up with a dirty story about SL. We saw that before. And, actually, there can be a dirty story about anything in the world. Hardly that we can expect that all the residents watch for media set-ups. Nor that is a good thing. Just imagine that level of paranoia around the grid.

Yes, it’s “our world - our imagination” and why would anybody care? And why would anybody had a right to care? But that is common sense. but common sense is not ruling this world (not only SL, the bigger one) nor respect for other people’s privacy and freedom is something that is not used in dirty games.

Is there an attitude that can protect ourselves? Cause that is what is on the pot here, not just LL’s asses nor biz, but ourselves, our lives (not just second, the bigger ones as well) and freedoms.
Nicholaz Beresford May 10th, 2008 at 12:40 pm 3
hey dandellion.

thanks for the thoughtful article. I actually didn’t occur to me that that the status-quo may be sufficient for ass-covering, but you and peter are right. It could be enough to prove “we’re trying and we’re at it”. I don’t think Lindens are cynic enough to have planned it that way from the start, but there could be worse situations I guess (like a Linden team being hell-bent to complete the project with the same zest as with Dazzle :-)).

Re media: With the hype having died down, I don’t think it will be much of a story that this happens on SL. It was a big story the first time, but now … it’s like Paris Hilton or whoever flashing her pussy … big story first time, “oh really? *yawn*” second time.

But I like the fact how basically everyone ignores the Age-Verify parcel flag. Haven’t hit one a single time (not being age verified even though I once tired because the Lindens know anyway who I am).

Nick
dandellion May 10th, 2008 at 2:58 pm 4
Yes, media lose their sharpness with every strike they try. But will that be enough? And do we want to live in this “half defined state” too long? Maybe we do, maybe not.
Ciaran Laval May 12th, 2008 at 2:21 pm 5
The person who gets a good internet age verification scheme working will be a very rich person, alas the Integrity system doesn’t fit the bill, which is why I imagine things have gone quiet on that front. There were problems, there were data protection issues and there were those unable to verify despite providing the information.

The link is still there on the user account page but some basic issues have remained unanswered, such as how does this scheme work in conjunction with the European data protection act (I suspect it doesn’t).

I verified earlier in concierge beta, when it was much simpler to verify. People can flag their parcels to allow age verified residents only and fair play to them, but there’s a flag on the signup screen to the main grid that asks people to confirm they’re 18 or over. This Integrity system is just an additional layer, but it’s a layer that doesn’t really do what it says on the tin and users have voted with their feet on this issue, they’re simply not using it.
dandellion May 13th, 2008 at 9:55 am 6
You are right, one who make a good verification system on the Internet will be very very rich. But it is not only that Integrity turned out bad both because of its own history and implementation in SL. The idea of verification on-line is problematic no matter how carefully and bug-less it was developed. For decades we were taught not to trust anybody on the Internet with our personal data. And that was a good advice. We don’t give our phone numbers to complete strangers, right? Why should we give more than that to complete strangers with databases and search and filtering algorithms? Especially in the age when that data is valuable to many, from corporations interested in market and consumer behaviour, via plain boring spammers to who knows which secret services. And all that risk for what? To have a new sex toy in the virtual world? To set a cybersex session with escort? To see some porn? C’mon, let’s be safe on-line.
Ciaran Laval May 13th, 2008 at 1:34 pm 7
Oh agreed. In Concierge beta all I had to provide was name, address and date of birth. That information is public, I had no problem with that. When it came to verifying my alt they were asking for a passport or driving licence number. Two things struck me, one, I’m verified already why do I need to send information again. Two, I checked with the UK passport office to ask how this company could confirm my passport number related to me and they told me, they can’t. Now call me suspicious if you will, but when a company are asking for data that the people controlling that data say the company can’t verify it makes me reluctant to part with that data and wonder what they’re up to,

So the alt is unverified, I’m not providing them with data they shouldn’t need so I can be dazzled by pixelated boobies :)
Nicholaz Beresford May 13th, 2008 at 2:03 pm 8
In germany passports and personal IDs have a long number with the date of birth included and with checksums. So technically they could do a superficial check, but the checksums are a well known algorithm and there are even websites where you can generate a number based on that pattern. In my case address and name are not public since I have an unlisted phone number. Subsequently the verification failed in my case (even with the correct personal ID).
Ciaran Laval May 13th, 2008 at 4:11 pm 9
lol my driving licence doesn’t even have a complicated algorithm to work out my date of birth, it’s basically my date of birth reversed within the driving licence number but how they link my driving licence number to me is the issue.
Nicholaz Beresford May 13th, 2008 at 4:32 pm 10
Well, they can’t (link back to you) which is obvious to anyone with a single working brain cell :-). What works though, is passing the hot potato to Aristotele.

Btw, another common workaround I’ve heard of (and know one person who used it successfully) was this: Use a very common name (like Jane Smith) from a phone book and provide an arbitrary number for the last four digit s of a social security ID. Based on the idea that with so many Jane Smith in the U.S. there’s bound to be one for every combination of those last four digits.

Well, it really makes age verification by credit card look like Fort Knox in comparison.
dandellion May 13th, 2008 at 5:39 pm 11
In Serbia (and the rest of former Yugoslavia) every citizen has 13 digits ID number. First seven digits are date of the birth, no algorithm just the plain date. And every kid realizes that. There is also one number for sex (which is also easy to realize if you compare several numbers. The rest is code of the area kid was born which is not so obvious and takes a bit of insight into administrative codes. Last three numbers are counting the kids born on the specific day in specific area.
But sharing passport data with any foreign officials is supposed to be illegal though I don’t get it cause you have to give your passport in the embassy. And that is the case with many other countries that are not happy with their citizens sharing data with unknown organizations abroad.
Eidur May 14th, 2008 at 3:41 pm 12
…abd here’s the italian scheme:

XXX + YYY + year-of-birth + (letter of alphabet rangin from the 1st to the twelvth, basically month of birth) + day-of-birth (number) + area code (needs some practicing of admin stuff) + checkdigit (letter)
where XXX and YYY stands for 3 letters from your name plus 3 from your surname.
basically the algorithm to create them is so easy that once you know name, surname, date and place fo birth you can easily obtain one on the internet.
it was very common procedure for banks and alike to “manually” obtain one when missing it in the customers documentation, of course sometimes the results of the mathematical tool on the internet are a little unpredictable and this practice is outlaw now (tough everyone keep doing that).
Anonymous May 15th, 2008 at 8:05 pm 13
Ciaran,

Try regstering your alt by entering

Name
Date of Birth
Postcode (this is important)
and for the ID field just choose one of the forms (such as ID Card) and enter “Not Applicable” (that why if it verifies, LL can’t accuse you of entering false information since what you enter is accurate by virtue that the verification succeeded).
Raul Crimson June 2nd, 2008 at 4:04 pm 14
Now we have the answer to your question, Dandellion, they replaced Age Verification with Shape Discrimination.
dandellion June 2nd, 2008 at 4:26 pm 15
ROFL
Yes, indeed.
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