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by ronbenton·7mo ago·view on hn ↗
This identity verification business for porn sites is a nightmare for privacy. Will just result in more personal info being hacked and blackmail given the subject matter.
2 comments
I wonder why identity verification is even mentioned, when age verification is all that's needed.
That’s a good call out, I should be more careful with my words. Practically, I haven’t seen age verification implemented online without some kind of identify credential furnished. But I didn’t mean to imply some kind of IAL2 compliant identity assurance or something
Because in an environment with personal computing devices and where consumer tech companies' primary business is surveillance, the two are equivalent.

(Personal computing devices make it so anyone of a certain age can run software that proxies their credentials to another user (either for profit or activism), and the primacy of the surveillance business makes it so that third parties can never be trusted to mask your identity)

Because that's what it is really about. Whatever label you put on it, it's really about removing privacy.
Genuine question, how do you age verify without KYC?

Do we have any real world examples where this exists?

I works with KYC, there seems to be no viable way right now. I've heard discussions about using bone measurements similar to those used in sports to detect age cheaters.
A novel approach would be to verify age and then discard identity records, which is standard in the brick and mortar equivalents like bars.
Unfortunately no. In my state all the bars and nightclubs near colleges scan IDs and keep a copy.

The fakes are so good now that the state basically admits they can't expect the bouncer to detect them. So they keep an image to prove "hey we tried our best".

This doesn't work, because something still has to be stored (unless you like the idea of being nagged everywhere you go online (including just clicking links) to "verify your age"). That upends the entire "well it's just like verifying your age at a bar" idea.
Well I was originally thinking of a single bit "isVerified"

But if you were reverified every time, that would be closer to the bar analogy. Although it does increase cybersecurity risk by repeated exposure.

Session identity. You go to the verification website, your browser gets a token that you can use until you close your browser.

But that doesn't expose the political opponents, it would not be accepted.

I mean, this still wouldn't work. Mainly because people would categorically hate it. I mean, would you want to have to "prove" your an "adult" (whatever that happens to mean depending on where you are in the world) every time your session gets terminated? What about non-browser apps?
One place tried to scan my id recently. Hopefully others will speak up against it but I am not optimistic.
This is why I don't by alcohol online for delivery: the delivery person is required by their company to scan my ID. Places I order from already know enough about me - they don't also need a copy of my identification.
I bought a rackmount case on ebay that for some reason got shipped "Adult signature required", which is seemingly for alcohol shipments. The Fedex delivery guy repeatedly pestered me to scan my ID. I had already shown him my ID, signed for the package, and had possession of it. But he didn't speak English and couldn't understand me telling him we were done, so he just kept repeating "scan" and shoving the terminal at me. He also kept trying to steal the package back from me as if it hadn't been delivered, and I had to keep getting very aggressive to make him back off. He then insisted I speak to his supervisor on his phone (the ones who are now unreachable when you have a problem). The supervisor then continued badgering me about their policies and threatening to call the police (I told him go right ahead). Eventually they did give up and leave. No police ever showed up, and Fedex continues to deliver to me just fine. What an all around dystopian nightmare, though.
>"He then insisted I speak to his supervisor on his phone (the ones who are now unreachable when you have a problem)"

Soon, a chat only chatbot accessible through a widget on their app. Or worse a phone you call, but it's just an LLM with a TTS wrapped around it.

I think much of it is just LLM/TTS at this point. But even well before then it was a call center agent who would put in a "ticket" for nobody to call you back.
Couldn't most of that encounter have been avoided by just walking back inside your home with your package and closing the door? I don't understand why you'd even want to engage with someone like that.
Maybe?

But first, that's generally not how I operate.

Second, just because I went back inside the house doesn't mean that the situation would magically be over - they'd still be outside, right? And I'd have to monitor them until they left.

Third, it seems doing that would have encouraged them to pigeonhole the situation into the usual problem of "package getting stolen" for which they presumably do call the police and frame the situation that way. The police coming would then make for an escalated situation which I would have to deal with. Heck with the way police often defer to the status quo of how businesses frame problems, they might have even insisted I follow Fedex's desired procedure of scanning my ID despite it being legally unnecessary.

One of the big problems here is companies deploying user-facing agents that can't even communicate in the common language. There is another driver whom I've tried a few times now simply to work with her to get packages delivered (eg I'll bring them in from the street because I'm in the middle of shoveling snow), but communication is needlessly difficult. I'm sure many of the destructionists are faced with similar frustrations and then go on to blame "illegals", as if purifying society will compensate for bad incentives. But as usual, it's actually the corpos pitting us against one another in a race to the bottom.

Interesting. I order alcohol online and have never had that happen.
In the UK all delivery apps [0][1][2] will prompt the driver/rider to ask for ID when the customer purchases age-restricted items like alcohol or cigarettes.

I am not sure why the apps don't get the customer to upload a photo of their ID once rather than get the delivery person to request it for every restricted order?

It wastes so much time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYEC_ooaC5A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILzfEaSiYf4

[0] https://riders.deliveroo.co.uk/en/delivering-alcohol

[1] https://help.uber.com/en-GB/ubereats/restaurants/article/how...

[2] https://courier-help.just-eat.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/103290...

Well, yeah, they ask to see ID, but they don't scan it. (I'm in the US though.)