Age verification, Failure or Success?

QFT - Yep, the lawsuit crap is the only real reason they are tossing the verification to a third party.





The part with the new continent and the new Adult settings have nothing to do with lawsuit issues. The new Adult crap is only so they can get it all in one area and therefore Disney-fy the rest of the grid and make it more desirable to business and families -- IMO anyway

I think Adult verification should be done at the door so to speak, for SL as a whole, but that would go against LL's open door policy of letting everyone and their uncle in, with as many alts as they want. Like Lil said, they will just keep the naughty stuff walled up, so this way the mainland will be open to as many sets of eyeballs the cam possibly have to view the coming corporate adspam. I'm sure when LL pimps the numbers to the Corps, they conveniently omit the fact that a good portion are merely alts or bots of an existing account.

Tegg:

How the hell do you verify anything about the person at the computer?

You can not user verify

You can only data verify



Jon can use Bob's data and pass verification, because you can not verify the person sitting there is Bob. All you can do is confirm the data for Bob is that of an adult, or real person.

There is no verification of users possible, only data verification.

So even verfied accounts are still quite possibly anomymous users using someone else's data to pass the verification processes.

No system is perfect, I only expect it to be 90% effective at best, but even a 50% effective system is better than the current 0% effective system.
Car keys don't verify that the driver really is allowed to drive the car, doesn't mean we should stop having them on cars.
You are trying to say the current system has the best effectiveness? What percentage do you think it keeps out of underage and people who use the anoymity to grief or rip off other users?

And the system is never going to work.

Why?

Because the ease of gaining the data to verify as someone else is too easy.

Who can they sue/prosecute when all they have is an ip address that can be faked?

you can't get a 90% effective solution.

The current system keeps out 100% of the honest people that shouldn't be in SL, no system will keep out the dishonest folks intent on causing trouble or bypassing the restrictions.

It's like all laws, rules and regulations. Law-abiding citizens obey them, criminals do not.

Edit: And a car key analogy fails. Because the key and lock are physical and must be handled physically. The internet is data, and that means things are never that simple or effective. The internet is not some brick and mortar location you can lock up...

I'm very much inclined to agree.
IDV and the flagging of Parcels as IDV-only is so yesterday's bad idea. I think they may have given up on the sheer craziness of it all - the M and PG sims side by side and the hacking at the spaghetti code. Perhaps that is why the per parcel IDV-access bugs have never been fixed yet.
Continent is far easier to implement and for the delicate to understand. Right now, we can see Ursula on the grid map. We can also see the Teen Grid. We can't get to either of those. Access blocking to sections of the Grid by account type has been working for years.

Moving the extreme stuff to a separate continent makes sense if one is trying to attract users who would be more than uncomfortable with in-your-face sex/violence potentially lurking around the next corner.

I'm from Australia. The age verification process seemed to work fine for me and according to my account details it was successful, but if I go somewhere which has age verification switched on, I am refused access as I am not age verified.

Suing and prosecuting is a reactive measure, prevent most of them getting in in the first place and worry about the ones that slip through. I agrre it wopn't keep criminals out, but we are trying to keep kids out.
The current open door policy is 100% failure it won't even keep a kid out let alone a criminal.
Sorry but your "sue them after they do wrong later" approach fails and has been a proven failure for 5 years, all that dioes is creates more stress and work for everyone. people are physical, and if your preferred "total anoymonity" system can't provide any ID at all how are you suppossed to sue someone anyway? Just keep beliving your legal system is protecting you when your name and face are on the news being charged for pedofile crimes, even if the charges are false and don't stick, the mud will.

Have you tried other locations with the age-verified restriction, or just one? I know that makes no sense, but when some of us were trying this out we found some IDV'd avatars could get into some restricted parcels and not others. That's quite useless, of course, but it would be interesting to know if it's still behaving the same way.

If you can't get into other age-restricted parcels either, then it could be that they've just turned off the process that updates the grid with information about account verification.

In fact, if you've only just verified, it could be that you tested before the information was sent to the grid, which seemed to be a bottleneck back when all this went live.

Until reading the feedback thread yesterday, I'd assumed that the whole verified-only process was to be subsumed by the Adult content thing: that IDV would just be one way to qualify the account for Adult access, so if it didn't work just buy a debit card and use it to put payment info on file. But it turns out that IDV-restricted access will still exist on both Adult and sub-Adult sims.

So it does kinda matter whether or not it can be made to work (for some value of "work".

It will not work.

No matter the system used Tegg

All you can do is verify the data given. You can not verify who is using the data or at the computer.


Stop, now reread that again and again till it sinks in.

You can not prevent anyone from using the service short of physical verification procedures. Data based verification does not and can not ever work to do anything other than CYOA legally for the company and it's users.

Suing and prosecuting would be on behalf of the ones who have their data used by the identity thieves to bypass the data verification (there is a reason it's hard to prosecute online id theft... you have little to no evidence to go on when it's theft of services vs theft of property using the stolen data)

So when do you start requesting surgical implants in both hands combined with multiple biometric systems so that you can physically verify who is at the computer?

About the same time they do so to be sure people driving cars are really authorised to do so I think. Till then your "no system at all" is ludicrous it does not work at all.

You can not prevent determined people from getting in, you can not prevent a determined dog from escaping a fenced enclosure either so why bother with one by your logic?

Yes you (if memory serves) said this in the discussion threads about new adult content earlier. To which I'd bluntly reply: So what? For one thing - parents can conference long distance already with their own kids via Skype, webcam and other already existing devices. They can also 'teach to build and script' by doing what a parent should do (presuming they live in same house/have visitation) - be in the same room with their own child spending quality time. Not giving the kid their own computer just because they want one, let alone unsupervised internet access. Kids don't automatically get cars either, just because they want one.

As for adults wanting to spend time in SL with their kids, then find another way to do that other than bringing kids into the general world. For instance, as you must know from those other threads as you were posting the same time I was, myself and others proposed the idea that kids in the existing teen grid could vet for adults they know IRL such as their parents and families, LL could do its own background check etc.

To be honest I am not even for that, since there is no way to truly know who is who or who might do what. BUT, it would be better/safer for all concerned as well as the existing SL grid, than to bring kids into the overall SL world.

I have no idea where you are headed with that Roman invasion analogy. I thought you were for all the changes? You keep defending age verification every way you possibly can, at least. Are you saying you don't believe that LL will never bring kids into general SL? Well none of us knows (maybe not even LL, yet - maybe) so why speculate when it's getting close to Ursula's grand opening.



Huh? Aren't they doing both?

Why not the third option you've omitted: Create a new, PG only continent, and let those who are underage (if kids are let in officially in future) or who blanch at the thought of naughty words/naughty bits, go there by CHOICE. Wouldn't that be the easier and less upsetting option?

It's called a license check, happens frequently on weekends and during big events by police.

They also run tags, check for insurance , look for possible drunk driving, etc.

I think you forget something: Access to an online service is not the same as locking a door.

It is more akin to dialing a random phone number and asking someone out of the blue what thier name and date of birth is. They can say Bob and Feb 8th 1970... and that is all you get to go on. There is no way online to verify that Bob is really Bob... it could easily be Adam or James. But you can verify that yes there is an entry in the databases that says there is a Bob, and he was born on that date.

That is all the system can do.

It can only verify the information that is given to it. It can not stop or even detect someone using unauthorized information in order to bypass it.

You can actually look on many a corporate website and get enough data to register an account as someone. And then actually verify age with a little more work.

MortVent: Tegg has latched onto the locked door analogy (since the first "continued discussions", and will not let go of it for love or money. Many have tried to pry his fingers off. No such luck as yet. That it simply does not apply in this instance is lost on him, I fear.

Nothing personal meant, only trying to say, his argument structure is all over the map.

Well then..

Online verification is best described as a glorious door with a combination lock that uses a huge series of dials with letters and numbers. Capable of allowing for billions of people to have their own combination to open it. The door even remembers who's combination was used and when to open it.

Unfortunately it's not too hard to figure out a person's combination and use it to open the door. And all the door remembers is the combination used to open it, it can't tell you who used the combination to open it just whose combination of letters & numbers was used.

Yes well all you guys seem to have latched onto the "if it's not 100% effective it fails completely so do nothing" anology and can't seem to realise some protection ids better than none we have now.

Yep so by your analogy you realise this so leave the door unlocked everyday rather than implement a sytem that's not 100% effective?

It isn't any protection at all, not to the users, is what some of us keep saying. You fail to acknowledge that we are even saying that.

We can't 'realise it' because we do not agree with it. Thought about it already, disagree with you, simple.

It may offer some legal protection to the corporation, and that is about it. That's my opinion, I can't express it much more clearly. I know you disagree, but please don't say we don't understand or realise your contentions.

You have the 100% effective solution with available technology in place. It's locked and closed.

You are complaining about the people that picked the lock to get in.

This, for the most part. Under the current totally broken system, I am not any more secure in believeing the people I interact with are adults than without it. Anyone I talk to can be that teenager who verified with dad's information, or as Abraham Lincoln.. It's asham that gets LL of a legal hook, and gives us a false sense of security. Until a better system is in place, I trust my instincts infinately more than LL's.

Besides, all these RL analogies about door locks and car keys are just ridiculous.

You don't have to pick this lock. It is broken.

It's as locked as can be done with verifying online.

Unless you want an identification implant that verifies you as being on the computer when you access online services like sl being mandatory for sign ups.

of course it is still data being sent over the net, so some may very well break it and be able to falsify verification information even then by duplicating legit verification data sent in by the biometric systems or implants.

There is no santa claus either, and the easter bunneh was delicious when covered in a nice cream sause.





Sorry had to do it!

Is is protection.

Consider

Child 1 is confronted with a "tick box if you are 18" lockout.

Child 2 faces a please verify with a Credit Card or Social Security Number or Drivers Licence.

Which child is going to take the longest to get in if they manage to get in?