Age verification, Failure or Success?

If you look into Aristotle, LL's third-party verification service, you will find past political ties with U.S. conservatives and often-voiced concerns about their datamining practices.

I, personally, had an unpleasant encounter with them. I was unable to pay an emergency vet I took my cat to by check, because since my checking account had never previously been "verified" through Aristotle they labeled it as "untrustworthy". It took 3 phone calls to find this out.

I'm not voluntarily giving any of the patchwork of information that makes up my identity to these clowns again.
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I age/identity verified in the UK about a year ago with no problems. Speaking personally (and I know others think differently), the existence of anonymous accounts within SL causes me greater concern than the identity verification process. I understand that at one time identity verification was compulsory in order to join. To my mind that requirement should never have been relaxed. That said, it should be applied across the board or not at all.

Remember, at the parcel level, age verification ONLY affects the first 50 M above the terrain.

So the entire continent of Ursula will become a seedy overground (rather than a seedy underground), where anyone can get in if the landing points are set over 50m. Great thinking, LL.

So the entire continent of Ursula will become a seedy overground (rather than a seedy underground), where anyone can get in if the landing points are set over 50m. Great thinking, LL.

for those of you who ended up only being able to verify if you used an old address, was that address the same as the one you originally gave to LL?

It was just a random thought.

What is worrisome though is that the current botched age verification can't be used if the sim is non-public. You have to allow public access to allow restricting access based on either age or payment.

If you look into Aristotle, LL's third-party verification service, you will find past political ties with U.S. conservatives and often-voiced concerns about their datamining practices.

What is the tie-in with politics and government? Why must Aristotle send this information to the government (check the end of the beta page)? Isn't this a computer game?

Makes me more than a bit queasy that - given its censorship past and questionable agendas in past - some conservative political party or faction has access to real life data and can combine it once supplied, with an entire virtual life.

Hope none of us plan to ever run for office.

(Oh and I thought Aristotle DOES hold onto the info, it is Linden Labs which doesn't and which only uses or gets a numeric code for each person. And if Aristotle doesn't hold onto the info, how then could it possibly hope to check it, cross reference it in future or supply it to "the government" - creepiest part of that page - to ensure it's all true?)

Those who have no trouble with being data mined or spied upon good for you. Woohoo. But it should be a choice not forced upon people.

The company used for this ID checking seems to be an American based data-mining company, with a shady track record, who sells info to anyone who'll pay the asking price.

As a UK resident, it seems clear to me that volunteering details of ID documents they can NOT already be legally holding to check against, would merely be helping to swell their data and profits. No doubt this company would love to compile an international database to match up with any other online information it's possible to glean from the Web and then hawk that little goldmine around too.

No thanks.

The company used for this ID checking seems to be an American based data-mining company, with a shady track record, who sells info to anyone who'll pay the asking price.

As a UK resident, it seems clear to me that volunteering details of ID documents they can NOT already be legally holding to check against, would merely be helping to swell their data and profits. No doubt this company would love to compile an international database to match up with any other online information it's possible to glean from the Web and then hawk that little goldmine around too.

No thanks.

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Someone told me that Aristotle offers the corporation insurance if sued for ageplay incidents, though. Must be the only reason they are contracting with them. I can see a suit thinking that is a good 'bottom line'.
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That is the reason for using Aristotle. They indemnify LL against the costs of being sued if someone slips past their 'verification' and a legal action ensues.
It's a measure of cost mitigation for LL primarily.

If someone does sue, they'll discover the RL identity of anyone remotely connected with the alleged incident and pull them into the action if they look like a good target. - and Aristotle will be no help to those people at all.

If someone does sue, they'll discover the RL identity of anyone remotely connected with the alleged incident and pull them into the action if they look like a good target. - and Aristotle will be no help to those people at all.

Sad thing is: the age verification does not protect them from ARs about age or age play
edit: proper spelling, wrong word

But Tegg the point is likely: that being equal, why the need to roust all of SL?
Also, anyone currently in SL as a minor has at the very least lied, or commited fraud depending how one sees it.
Since having a paying contract (or maybe any contract) with a minor is actually not enforceable/legal in the U.S. I wonder what the point is of having minors in SL anyway? *They cannot be held to TOS, as I understand current U.S. contract laws.*
Can any lawyers in the thread help out with that issue?

Another minor, tangentially related issue: As far as I can figure out, there's no way to restrict a parcel to age-verified *and* charge for entry. This doesn't affect anything I can imagine doing, but it surely must be somebody's business model. Of course I've only played with this on the Mainland, so possibly the sim-level restriction for verification and a parcel-level charge for entry will work fine.

I would still like to know:

What is the current corpspeak on whether PIOF will count as being age verified?

I successfully verified some alts during the early beta in an attempt to have test accounts to cover the combinatorics of IDV'd or not, PIOF or not, and web page or not. Back then I was a USA resident, so maybe that made it easier.

This isn't to say I don't have concerns about the security of any data exposed to Aristotle / Integrity. According to what we were promised, they are not to retain any of the information used to verify, and only return the single bit that the verification succeeded or not for a particular account. Given their track record, however, there's ample reason to doubt that claim.

There's also the problem that this process doesn't reliably associate the person supplying the data with the data being supplied (assuming the data supplied is reliably tested as belonging to an of-age living person in the first place).

And finally there's the problem of IDV status not being reliably used to restrict or allow access to age-restricted in-world parcels. I haven't tested this very recently, but I tested it repeatedly over a long interval after parcel-level restriction was possible on Mainland: unverified could get into some restricted parcels, and some verified couldn't get into others.

All of which is to say that only the narrowest possible interpretation of "success" has ever been possible with the current IDV process.