Age verification, Failure or Success?

So what? Did you know that you can get arrested and thrown in jail for just being an AMERICAN in some countries?

Best to know the laws of where you are going before you get on that plane, no?

I don't need to be protected from kids AT ALL. Kids don't pose a real threat to me online, or in RL. What poses a real threat to me are idiots who think I am somehow automatically responsible for raising and protecting their kids. My opinion is that those kinds of people need to be prevented from having kids period. They want to threaten me with deadly force to protect their kids, I will be happy to respond with deadly force to disavow any such responsibility, for both them and their effin' kids.

I never said *I* trusted the rest of the world to keep their kids in check. I simply don't care; if they don't it *IS NOT MY PROBLEM*. I also never said I was against kids being allowed to roam SL freely; however, if there's gonna be a place "for adults" where kids aren't allowed, then they aren't allowed, and that's all that needs to be said. I'm well aware that kids get onto the adult grid and do consenting adult things all the time. I report as many as I am aware of that I feel responsible enough to report to LL. As far as I am concerned, voluntary responsibility is the MAXIMUM extent of my involvement, and it should be LL's stance to not try and cater to the nanny state BS, especially when there isn't any legal precedent for it.

As such, if LL is interested in pandering to this stupidity, then they are making it quite clear that they don't want responsible adults paying for and playing their "game", and they can be quite content with their own little DisneyLand whilst the rest of the mature and ethical world leaves them to their own brain rot.



I'm quite happy to be a member of said group, thank you kindly.

Are check golf slacks illegal in some countries then?

Pep (I thought it was only France)

I'd be interested in knowing whether the main posters in this thread are, or ever have been, parents.

Pep (Like armchair baseball "experts" who have never hit a pitch)

Yes, but I think if someone is being snsred & charged for grooming a minor, it's not going to matter what country they are from.

Perhaps it would aslo be interesting to know how many have been in the postion to worry about cybering with a minor as it's about keeping kids away from adults more than keeping adults away from kids. Do you have to have kids to want a world free of them? And is it therefore wrong that I approve of others interacting with their own kids in SL in PG areas? Why is there a preference to allow easy anoymous access for kids rather than attempt any solution, even if it needs work? why is it ok to turn the whole current contintent Adult verification only rather than create a new continent and zone SL properly like they should have early in the piece so we wouldn't be having conflicts like this? Why haven't other virtual worlds learnt this lesson from LL's mistakes?

I'll take that as a "no" then.

Pep (and assume the same for non-respondents)

I am a parent although I now have grandchildren, my own experiences with the Internet and my kids when they were kids, was supervision. The did not have access to the PC to use the internet unless either me of my ex wife were there with them. They never had PC's connected to the internet in their rooms either. The PC that was connected was downstairs in the front room, where they could be monitored. Rule was that if Mum or dad wasn't available to watch them then they didn't use it. They also knew if they went to any sites that they shouldn't then the internet was taken away from them as a punishment.

It was as simple as that and they never accessed adult stuff etc. in all that time. Well not from a home PC and they knew if it happened at a friends house and i found out then punishments still applied I am sure though as they grew they possibly did from other places as i am not that naive and knew what i was like as a kid

I never hid the dangers either about what potentially could happen online as well, although i smile as my son on his 18th Birthday went online and straight to an adult site, because he now could he told me lol

I am a parent of 1 adult and 2 teens
What has sickened me recently was an adult who knowingly allowed a minor (16) into his home in SL and was involving her in BDSM as in she had on her profile she was owned by him. I reported the girl and this man seem the girl is gone ( though i guess gone to an alt) but he is still in SL. His comment when i IMed him to let him know she was a kid thinking he would not know was " "him"I respect her age and what she does, Windsweptgold Wopat: well she is against SLs rules she is a kid 16 "Him": so what I respect her and treat her like a human being.
These sound like grooming terms to me. He needs to be reported to the authorities and banned from SL. His kind is who we need removed from SL and he was not hanging about in the extreme areas.

Somebody reported me for being underage on Thursday evening which is a load of rubbish as I am 19 years old but anyway I verified my age on the Thursday night but since then I haven't been able to log in world.

I get the message "Second Life cannot be accessed from this Computer"

So I sent in a support ticket late thursday night, didn't get a reply yesterday I presume that was because it was Good Friday. I hope it all gets sorted on Monday or i'll be rather pissed off.

verification does no protect against age ar's

you have to jump through hoops every time you get an age AR even after the verification process

because is doesn't work

You will find that you will probably have to fax/send some proof into them from what i remember from other people having the same problem. It maybe worth giving them a ring and finding out

Just a thought

But it's entirely meaningless because we're talking a self-selected population of the most outspoken people here. If the polls from the Openspace were any indication, nobody should be here to have this conversation now. Based on that, I'd give this poll a margin of error of at least 100%.

Yep, no kids of my own and never will have due to medical risks, I have had relationships with step children though, I have 2 nieces, 4 nephews and friends children I have a fair bit of interaction with of course too. And I live in Australia to answer our other question, so have little faith in the US legal system protecting me I would rather see real barriers to prevent under age access to adult areas for that reason.
If myself and my partner had kids I would love to be able to teach them how to build/script in SL on a PG continent.
I have no illusions that I can monitor my kids 24/7 or mould them to be Angelic enough to resist any temptations, so to me all adult contient on the internet should require more than just "I am over 18 checkboxes" whicch are only for the internet owners legal obligations, not protection of internet users or residents/contributors of such sites. Also sites where massbotting can be used to cheat the system should require verification of primary users.
So do I take your answers to be yes or no? You didn't answer your own questions either ( I assume you agree too considering you didn't respond)

Well Monday being a day off too, Tuesday may be more productive, as others have said if in doubt contact LL live somehow, phone or Live Chat.
Unfortunately the verification system is still in beta so doesn't work, but when it is commissioned correctly it should protect you from underage AR's and quickly resolve an underage lockout.

I have yet to have any kids, but it hardly invalidates anyone's opinion on the matter.

If and when I have kids, they will be MY responsibility, and I sure as hell will NEVER pass that responsibility off on anyone else. Ever.

I have no illusions that I will be able to control them 100%, either, but they will be on permanent notice that anything I forbid them to do that they disobey will come with commensurate and inescapable penalties. I also will not burden anyone else or society as a whole with their exposure or upbringing. If they get access to adult content, it's no one's fault but my own, and I will take care of it with them. As far as I am concerned, all that is needed is identification. Access control is in the will, not in the locks; same as obeying the law.

Cars don't have speed governors, but we still have speed limit laws.

Good point, but I suspect that is due more to technical problems with installation as to knowing what the limit is where the car currently is, many factory GPS equipped cars will only need software upgrades to implement speed limiting, and some cars do have speed governors and most trucks do in Australia. Also there are financial incentives for governments to keep issuing speeding fines

Just as it is IMPOSSIBLE to verify age of anyone on the internet. There's no universal standard for identification, and no universal guarantee of authentication of said id with the person presenting it.

In fact, it would be easier to implement speed governors on vehicles than to do a worldwide age verification system that had ANY chance of preventing "kids" from accessing adult content.

Not to mention that such protections have never been proven to "protect" kids from any kind of harm to begin with.

The system is a deterrent just like a lock on a door.

A lock makes many would be thieves turn away, but one that wants in just breaks a window or busts down the door.

The check box system and verification works the same way, it turns away many of those that shouldn't be here.

Neither system works on the truly dishonest, only a portion of them as well as the honest.

There is no system that works better than that online. Because as we keep saying you can't verify who is at the computer, only what data they give you.

Well if people unwilling to age verify in someway or won't do so they should be treated as citizens of the world who won't identify themselves, and if their country is behind in it's infrastructure to identify it's own people then it needs to improve itself for those citizens it does want to interact with the rest of the world. Eventually we will all have our "World Citizen Number" probably a barcode & chip too. Those not having one or not wanting to use it will be restricted in what they can do in society.
Red light and Speed cameras do not verify the real driver of the vehicle 100% either but yet they are still used worldwide, and have a positive effect, though are also missused for hefty revenue collection.
I disagree that curent verification systems do not protect kids, the numbers of kids accessing adult sites requiring Credit Card ID would be much lower than those sites with "Over 18 checkbox" systems.
I suspect the numbers of kids protected by "Over 18 checkbox" systems would be low, it provides the barest of legal obligation for the site owner only. A adult verification system reduces the risk of minors accessing their sites greatly therefore also increasing protection to the sites members & contributors as well.

Yay we agreee on something

Oh?

The check box system works. Because it's as good a deterrent as you can have online.

The verification system doesn't work, because of the international nature of the internet.

To supply LL with verification data needed, many would be in violation of their countries privacy and data protection laws. Because the data requested is meant to be protected, not harvested by a company known for data mining to spammers (both electronic and physical junk mail... as well as telemarketing firms)

Plus I doubt LL wants to deal with the international laws related to data protection and privacy... hence outsourcing the job for the feel good verification system that was mainly done to get politicians off their back.

Mortvent (omg I agreed with you for once!)

I believe the above to be correct relating to some international countries....LL is going to open up a can of worms with this verification process.

The checkbox only prevents a very low number of 18 users from accessing SL, the adult verification system does not work completely but does make it more difficult to access, I created a hotmailaccount based alt to check this and I tried to make up an imaginary Australian citizen and it would not verify me. So it does work to some degree, but needs work as some people have been able to verify imaginary people I believe that it is better than nothing.
it would be interesting to know how many people have experienced difficulties verifying imaginary people. I have verified 3 of my 5 accounts linked to my main email address using my real ID and so far failed to verify my hotmail based account, I haven't tried using my real ID on the hotmail account yet.
LL probably didn't want to create a whole "Resident ID" department either I guess when it could be outsourced.
And since verifying I haven't seen any incress in spam/junk mail to my 6yo email address at all. I still recieve only 1 or 2 a day, compared to my work email on my work computer which only accesses technical sites, it recieves around 40 junk mails per day.

Ok I got my disposable alt verified using random details, it seems I had to use a legitimate street address, it did slow me down though I guess, but the secret would get out quick. Other countries may have differing results, the verification system needs a lot of work before LL are to release it from beta or use it for a basis of adult access to a new continent, we need to apply pressure to LL to have it fixed or replace it with another company how can do better. or we will need to resort to the old Credit Card system as this would have a higher success rate than the current beta verification system. Then again, if that is the best anyone can do it is still better than the current system of tick a box which is very easy to defeat. Actually now I think of it I don't even remember seeing a "over 18 checkbox" have LL removed it completly, or just buried it in the TOS?