Age Verifying - Useless?

Hello,

I've recently been wondering whether I should bother dig up my documents to verify my age on https://secure-web3.secondlife.com/account/verification.php?lang=en

Now being absolutely reluctant on submitting personal information on the internet, I've asked around to see if this was really of any use and efficient against being reported for being an underage. I've been told it's absolutely useless as anyone reported for being underage will be systematically banned without any sort of investigation whatsoever until they can "prove" that they are 18+.

Now my question is, what's the point of verifying your age on the website if it doesn't spare you from being banned for being randomly reported as an underage?

Isn't that a rather silly thing? Any griefer could go around reporting people randomly just to annoy them..

Is there an effective way to verify your age once and for all?

Sincerely yours,
Karll

Faxing your documentation for linden labs to have on file just incase something like this would happen. about the only solution I can think of

That's a good thing to bring up. I would expect verifying via integrity would be the end of all discussion. If they still ban you for age reasons that would be a serious problem. Someone needs to bring this up with the Lindens at one of their meetings.

It's not at all - LL completely ignore "age verification" if they suspect you might be underage. Which indicates how much confidence they have that the system works - but then it's not meant to work, it's just meant to be proof of compliance for them if the issue ever comes up in a legal sense. It is legally sufficient to indicate that they made an effort as a company; it is not sufficient to actually indicate anything worthwhile.

The age verification system is not effective as it stands at the moment. LL is supposedly working on making it more effective and at some point in time it may become semi mandatory to gain access to mature areas of the grid........at least, that's the plan as laid out quite a few months ago by Linden Lab in a blog post.

As far as someone randomly abuse reporting someone as underaged in the adult grid there is little one can do to prevent that. The age verification could, if it were effective, help in your "proof" of adult status. But, I'm sure LL will choose to err on the side of caution and temporarly suspend someone reported as underaged until it's proven to be false.........just the way it is these days where the honest have to give up to the dishonest in order to "protect the children". A shame for so many reasons.

But the consolation is that the person falsly putting out an abuse report on someone as a griefing effort will be perma banned. Or so LL says.

They know as well as we do that age verification is useless .

It could also simply be about having records: if anything comes up, they can point to the scanned/mailed copied and go "we had no reason to think they didn't belong to the person sending them. They belonged to an adult/teen so the account was reinstated/sent to the teen grid".

The system is still in Beta, and not even google grade beta yet

As for legal compliance, the drop down asking your age when you sign up is all they need to be legally compliant

One thing to consider is identity theft is rampart in this day and age, so they are loathe to keep the records on file due to privacy safeguards they would have to maintain. As well as others to comply with the international laws they would be subject to in order to maintain the markets in several countries.

This also limits what they can do in regards to verification, as some countries will work with them in easier means than others for the verification.

Faxing in documents, could easily be someone with access to the human resources file room and photocopying another employee's information or using an id stolen from someone.

there really is no 100% verification procedure

Ok, quite a bit to explain here.

The "age verification" option isn't really for Linden Labs' own age verification. It's for other residents'. The idea is that, for example, a resident running a sex-themed build doesn't have to worry about getting sued if an underage user visits them. The main reasoning behind this is a) the law doesn't make it clear if the person running the build has the responsibility to verify age, not just to leave it to the Lindens (eg, a porn site on the WWW has to have a click through to check age and can't just leave it to your ISP); and b) most of the people running sex builds on SL aren't professional pornographers and as such have a lot to lose in terms of relationships between friends, boss and family if they are taken to court on that type of charge, even if they win.

Moreover, the TOS explicitly states that you must NOT assume that all people in the world are of legal age, and that the Lindens make no guarantee of this.

The problem is that at the moment, most residents aren't using it, because it's very unreliable - often it doesn't verify people who are of legal age.

As far as I can tell, it will only work if your identity details have already been "stolen" or passed around on the internet somewhere, for Integrity to have traced them. It didn't work for me, but then again I've been very careful not to put any real personal details about myself up on sites like Facebook etc. Actually I don't know a single person in the UK for whom it's worked.

Can you be banned for being overage yet ?

on the teen grid you can.

It worked for me. However, I'm in the United States where Integrity and LL is located. Might be a connection.........I don't know.

Unfortunately, as it is currently implemented, Age Verification is pretty much useless. Even if one were to assume that the company that is collecting the age verification data was flawless in their processing of the data (no errors, no leaks), and even if one were to assume that 100% of the SL population was able to verify their age and did so (everyone who is actually of legal age on file as having proved that they are, everyone under legal age lacking that status), the system still provides almost no effective control.

Land owners can NOT use any scripted means to determine if an individual is or is not age-verified. This means security orbs and vending systems can not check age verification status. The LSL commands to check that status do not exist, and LL refuses to create them.

Group owners can not set limits on their Groups to ensure that only age verified members can join or remain members of a specific group. So they can't create access control groups to allow access only to age-verified people.

No individual can determine the age verification status of another individual, to manually determine if they should be admitted to an adults-only area or activity.

The lack of age verification does NOT prevent you from standing outside the parcel and looking in. It does not stop you from camming over to a vendor and purchasing "adults only" goods.

There are only two things that age verification status can be used for:

1: You can prevent 'in-person' access to a parcel in the area 50 M or less above the actual terrain. If your "adult venue" is entirely within a space no more than 50 M from the ground, you can keep someone from walking or flying into that 50M thick blanket over the terrain. They can still enter the parcel above the 50 M limit. They can't descend into that 50 M thick layer, but they are completely free to hover overhead and watch, or to access your skybox. 98.7% of the buildable area in Second Life is wide-open, considering we can now build to as high as 4096 Meters altitude. 50 M above the actual terrain isn't even high enough to keep people who are not age verified out of the upper floors of many buildings that are on the ground!

2: If a private sim is otherwise WIDE OPEN to the public, with no group access controls at all, you can ban access to the sim for anyone who is not "age verified". Attempts to TP into that sim will be denied. But this does NOT work if you want to use any sort of a group to further restrict access.

I sended the nice Mr. Winden my forf gwade wepot cawd. He wikey.

Having two friends having their account frozen because some dumb b!tch decided to report them as being underage I suggest that get the information just in case someone decides to do that to you. If it doesn't work age verifying your account what's the point but still have the information just in case it happens. I age verified my account but just in case I still have my account frozen. I have the information on hand if I need it. I used my state ID to verify my account since I don't have a credit card.

There is no way to verify your age 100%. Even if you fax documents to LL you could be faxing someone else's documents. Using Linden Lab's age verifying agency is even worse as you can easily be verifying your grandmother or someone. Even if you report to LL HQ prepared to submit to DNA testing you may not be the same person who has the account. Do you see what I am saying?

It's all worthless.

Doesn't really help. I have friends who did that after they were suspended the first time - just to have the same problem and being asked to fax the same documents again a couple of weeks later.

Because Linden Labs has a policy similar to how age verification works on the site... read it and dispose of it iirc to avoid legal issues

But the verification thing remembers that you supplied them with something they accepted.

Well the thing I think is, it does flag the account as verified. But they do it anyway, mainly CYOA type stuff.

Quoted for truth and applauds.

It's to put the blame right back where it belongs.. on the minor and the minor's parents.

If they had any actual confidence in their program, they'd require it for all accounts, rather than just make it voluntary. They used to have a payment plan they were going to put into affect for it, but apparently, they correctly gave up on it.

Imagine if they did require us to pay to get verified and they decided to ban a verified account? Or better yet, make it mandatory AND pay? Oh, I would not be a Linden Liaison for the world if they did that.

Thanks for the numerous replies.

I'll just wait and hope I don't get flagged, and follow the procedures when/if I do get suspended.

*hugs* That's all you can do, really.

What would happen is the same thing that happens with WoW and other online games.

People use prepaid credit cards, time cards, and all sorts of other ways to get past the pay to verify schemes.

I've helped a lady lock down the family computer because her son used a prepaid visa card to get into one of the paid verification systems for porn sites... next year he might get to use it again if he keeps his grades up.

Shh! Don't say put the blame on the minor... too many feel it's the responsibility company and government to protect them and their kids from things they don't want on the internet

Y'know I thought that an age verification system meant that it would do something like verify your age. I mean if this was a legal way to cover their ass then shouldn't it STILL cover their ass when someone is reported to be underage? Shouldn't the process be: 1. AV reported to be underage. 2. Checking integrity shows AV verified. 3. Our ass is covered closing ticket.

I'm pretty sure they'll be re-pushing this AVS some time in the future but if they CAN'T STAND BY THE PRODUCT how can we even expect anyone to comply?

LL: please use this AVS so we can verify your age.
Us: so if we get accused of being underage this will help right?
LL: no.