Online services and app stores will have to use tools to check users’ ages, while protecting their privacy. They can for example use the EU age verification app, which does not retain identity documents or biometric data.
These checks are either trivial to bypass or they don’t actually preserve privacy.
How do you know? I am not an expert on this, but I think the app works
with the chip on the ID card to just verify that you are older than a specific age via some cryptographic proof without actually providing the name or age to the requester. Meanwhile also the ID card provider doesn‘t know for what you used it for. This of course assumes no backdoors. From what I‘ve heard it is pretty genius, but that‘s not what the big social media companies would like to have, because they want your real age and name.
Edit:
The new age verification app is user-friendly and can be set up using a passport or ID card, enabling users to prove their age when accessing online services. The app is completely anonymous, works on any device, and is fully open source, meaning partner countries around the world can also adopt it.
One way to prevent sharing is to cryptographically sign the app’s state with a hardware id, using an external service so the private signing key is not leaked, and a locked down OS so you can’t fake the id or install a hacked app.
Whether that’s how this particular scheme works or not, strong ones always come with pretty serious freedom or privacy issues. You have to choose somewhere between a dystopia and an easily bypassable system. You can get most of the usefulness (preventing access to problematic things) with very simple systems (starting with the “are you overs 18 ?” click-through), and then each loophole you close comes at an increasingly authoritarian cost.
Have they still not cleaned up their act that you can use the tracker collar, sorry, smartphone app to at least verify your age for a website open on an actual computer?
These checks are either trivial to bypass or they don’t actually preserve privacy.
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How do you know? I am not an expert on this, but I think the app works with the chip on the ID card to just verify that you are older than a specific age via some cryptographic proof without actually providing the name or age to the requester. Meanwhile also the ID card provider doesn‘t know for what you used it for. This of course assumes no backdoors. From what I‘ve heard it is pretty genius, but that‘s not what the big social media companies would like to have, because they want your real age and name.
Edit:
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If its just a card, it may be privacy-preserving, but what’s stopping a kid from snatching their parents ID for a moment?
Biometrics might migitate that, but then it seems hard to DK so anonymous without a trusted 3rd-party imvolved, no?
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If it doesn’t reveal my identity in any way, what stops me from distributing my keys on the internet for free?
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One way to prevent sharing is to cryptographically sign the app’s state with a hardware id, using an external service so the private signing key is not leaked, and a locked down OS so you can’t fake the id or install a hacked app.
Whether that’s how this particular scheme works or not, strong ones always come with pretty serious freedom or privacy issues. You have to choose somewhere between a dystopia and an easily bypassable system. You can get most of the usefulness (preventing access to problematic things) with very simple systems (starting with the “are you overs 18 ?” click-through), and then each loophole you close comes at an increasingly authoritarian cost.
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Locking socializing down to only government approved hardware and OSes does seems pretty bad.
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Have they still not cleaned up their act that you can use the tracker collar, sorry, smartphone app to at least verify your age for a website open on an actual computer?
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I’m assuming this is the (various) source code(s) for the EU age verification app’s open source publishings? Or is there a different source for that?
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