Does this Age Verification actually verify things?

depends on how you look at it

It would not surprise me in the least if the first big surpise for 2008 is announcing the merging of the Grids.

All it verifies is if one can pass the verification process.

Someone with the right information who isn't 18+ could possibly age verify.

Two weeks ago I couldn't pass age verification.

This week I can. No, I didn't have my 18th birthday in the last fortnight All that has changed is that LL have worked out some problems for non-US customers. I've verified at other US sites using random SSN's as a resident of 123 Fake Street before, just to see if I could.

well it makes sense.

Everyone has to be 18+ to get into SL for now ..

But you don't check the box to see certain things, you check the box just because 18+ is the rule ..

Now well have a separate category of people who are already 18+ verifying they are 18+ ...

and the adult content will be restricted to them..

Why bother with the initial 18+ check box?

thats the logical conclusion to it.

Well for one thing, prolly one of the worst errors Linden Labs made was opening up the Adult Grid but make teens that want to join the Teengrid sign up with a credit card. The result is that the teens all join the main grid because they dont HAVE a credit card.
I guess thats why now WE adults have to proof that we're over 18.

Anyway, i did the age verification thing twice... it didnt work for me 2 weeks ago.. it did now and im verified.

well they had to do that.

Since the teen grid was specifically for teens they had to keep adults out.

Teens can sign up using PayPal and SMS as well, it's not just credit card.

(Edited to add I don't think the need for identifiable information to get on the teen grid is about verifying age as much as having verified RL information on file. Whenever an adult is found on the teen grid - which seems to be extremely rare - they proactively contact authorities and hand everything over)

How does signing up with a credit card keep adults out of the teen grid?

Every account on the teen grid has some verified RL information associated with it and any information LL has gets turned over to the authorities whenever they catch an adult on the teen grid.

Adults who might have legitimate reasons to be on the teen grid (educators, etc) have to have a background check done to make sure they are who they claim to be and even then they're ususally restricted to a single teen sim it seems.

(Looked up the quote, and supposidly only two adults ever snuck on the teen grid in three years so the "we know who you are" scare policy seems to work)

The only thing verified is that you managed to feed it some data that resulted in a "Pass".
That's all it verifies.

All you people going "I'm verified" :-

Oh yeah?
No you're not "verified". You could all be minors for all anybody knows. You could have 'verified' with someone else's data.

The thing is a lie and a farce.


IDV - so easy even a child could do it

thats kinda the thing,

the fastest loading page on the SL website is the verification check after you provide info.

If it was actually checking the information against something, you'd think it would load slower than say, a forums refresh.

Not likely, not when poor Ceera is fighting a losing battle to point out that you can't protect your land above 50m. There will be nothing in the profile to identify someone is age verified and no LSL calls to it either, so people can't build security systems.

Any idea that this was ever about building trust has been well and truly buried. You will be able to form a group for only identity verified residents. If you don't have a group like that, you're supposed to know yourself that everyone in your group is over 18.

This is becoming one of the most pointless exercises ever.

The point i was trying to make is that there arent much teens with a credit card or a paypal adress.. and there are still teens without a cellphone either.
Its way easier for the teens just to get an account on the maingrid.
And thats what happened.

So, all a teen needs to do is find Mom or Dad's Driver's Licence (in the US at least) and they're in. They already know their street address and their parent(s)' DOB's.

Easy as pie.

(Had to get the pie element in the thread)

this is true , much easier for teens to just click a check box and play on the adult grid then to ask their parents if they can help them sign up for teen SL.

In the long run I dont think it will matter. They have gone on record saying at some point down the road they will be opening SL up to "all ages" (within current internet regulations of course).

The current idea for "all ages" is something very different from merging the grids though.

What some (Lindens) would like is to have a Linden-owned area where teens and adults can interact, so that for instance live music performers can perform for the teens as well, or that parents have a place to meet up with their children, or for ex-teens (the ones who just turned 1 to come see their friends again.

Access for adults would still be subject to some sort of background check so that they can be held accountable in RL if need be.

I don't like the idea of entirely folding the teens in with the adults, but an "all ages" separate space does seem like a good idea.

The bottom line is that it doesn't have to be effective at verifying age. It only has to be effective at protecting LL from legal problems.

from the Dan Linden interview it sounded more like SL age limits would basically be like WOW for most of SL, with just certain areas adults only.

This would be like the regular internet is.

I don't know if this has changed, but it definitely seemed to be what he was saying.

Course I heard he isn't around anymore either ..

That's the impression I got from Daniel's talk too then .

But the "all ages" area idea came up two weeks ago during the office hour of a Linden that's very involved with the teen grid and there wasn't any real mention of merging other than to create a new tightly controlled space.

ahhh but thats like baby steps

start small and all that ..

I suspect the verification works something like this:

first they compare the data you've given against the data they have stored.

Then they compare how much of the data matched their data against what data they typically hold on someone from your country.

So in the US, they probably store quite a lot of information so a greater amount of what you enter has to check against their database.

For the UK - well they will have a complete but out of date copy of the electoral roll (names and addresses) from around 2001 when there was not opt out; an up to date but incomplete copy of the electoral roll (from which 40% of the population have opted out); unless they've been to ones behind all the recent government fiascos over losing data in the post, they will not have national security numbers or driving license numbers (apart from a smattering that they've bought from companies that a few peopleyou may have given these to in the past); they may have passport numbers.

So for the UK, and most of Europe, the amount of data which needs to check against their database to verify is probably much less - to the point that in some cases you can pretty much enter anything you like ("Not Applicable" is a good one to try entering - since you then are neither lying nor entering misleading information).

Of course, as Ceera's already mentioned, unless you are restricting a whole island estate, the inworld controls are pretty pointless - they only restrict up to 50m and then you can still see and interact with stuff by camming in, so they are about as effective as the mature flag - which does beg the question "What is the point of age verification?"

Interestingly Steve Linden closed Ceera's Jira issue on the 50m thing ( http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3786 ) with the comment:

"Age Verification is OPT-IN;"

implying that flagging a parcel containing adult content is optional - a view not supported by the FAQ.

There does seem to be a communications problem between the developers and the policy makers. First we have the developers adding the ability to display verification status in the client despite the policy being that this wouldn't show. Now we seem to have a design of the in world controls based on the notion that flagging adult content is OPT IN and optionally whilst the policy states that any adult content not on an age restricted parcel should be reported!

Matthew

That's a very excellent post Matthew.
I would take issue with the suggestion that they already have our Passport numbers however.

IDV is a PR/insurance stunt. It has nothing to do with verifying age or identity.
To me, the closing of a JIRA with "Age Verification is OPT-IN" is an indication of the internal conflicts in LL.
Tension between the sales muppets and the tech & support people is classic.

The muppets came up with IDV. They had no idea of what might be necessary in order to implement the back end.
We have Robin blogging about getting a better success rate on the front end, but it looks like LL as an organisation don't really want to engage with the practicalities of the back end.


There is a problem of LL having lost touch with the reality of 'living' in SL.
I read somewhere(?) that there is a significant and growing percentage of Lindens who never were residents.

... Linden has a SL birth date in March 2007. He's the knowledgebase editor for Linden Lab.
Despite the fact of the 50 metre limit on access controls being highlighted in JIRA, he wasn't aware of it. Check out the comments on the latest Blog posting re Knowledge Base Article of the Week: Getting Some Me (You?) Time
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/12/20/knowledge-base-article-of-the-week-getting-some-me-you-time/

If Lindens whose job is to package information don't go in-world to check out the detail of what they are pushing at residents, what are the chances of the policy-makers going in-world in 'deep cover' in order to understand the beast?
There was a theory that Lindens at least read JIRA, but I have to wonder how many of them actually do. Perhaps just a few techies?


What we have are policy decisions tailored primarily for sales and marketing purposes. The impact on residents does not appear to be a consideration.

We had a Q&A with the product manager responsible for age verification last week and someone raised that point:

(Selective quoting since it was a multi-part question)
Hopefully they'll hold regular office hours at one point to get wider feedback.

Forgive me, but I'm confused: is age verification now part of the regular client, or is it still in some beta phase?

I want that job. Making stuff up without having to know what I am talking about. Sign me up.