verifying age

Because the likely punishent is a permanent ban, I think that anyone who ARs someone for being under age sould have to prove their own age or be age verified already.

In the present situation a 9-year old could join SL 'illegally' and AR the first person they see for being underage. They might even just be playing about with the options, with no malicious intent, unaware of the consequences of what they're doing.

That is kind of like the police investigating everyone that calls 911. Which would stop a lot of people from calling 911.

Actually a whole lot of people should stop calling 911 - or they should be fined if it is not a true emergency. Our 911 system actually gets many calls from people for things like "the neighbor's dog is barking" and even "what is the phone number for time and temperature?"

Actually you do get fined for misuse of the 911 system by calling in repeatedly with false reports (or even one depending on the crime you report)

I've never had to use it.

Thankfully.

So far, the age verification process that LL currently employs will merely allow you into parcels that have the age verification tick-box marked (sometimes). (^_^)

Other than that, it gives you no protection from age related ARs and we've historically seen people get successfully age-ARed multiple times. (^_^)

Add to that... It's outscourced. (>_<

So, for now, I refuse to verify. I haven't seen a parcel that requires me to verify. And, I'm "old enough, thankyouverymuch"... Come the day it's legally demanded, I'll gladly hand it over, but, until then I see no need. (^_^)y

I did it.

I'm not in America and I used an out of date, expired drivers license and it went through just fine.

It's not a big thing.

/me hates when people try to be fascist about other people's harmless game playing habits. /me wishes some in the thread would keep their moralising to themselves.

beh

Just because you don't like kids, everyone in SL should have to fork over all of their personal info to the man? Wow....

How about avs that ACT like kids? How about, oh, a lot of other things in SL. Should everyone else dance to your personal tune?

As for alts how do you know that a lot of people "use it to get around bans"? (I'd say there are as many or more, who pour a LOT of money into the SL community by outfitting two avs.) And why do you worry so much about what others do. Just curious!

OK, I've decided that you are about 15, 17 tops and testing the system. You ignore everyone else's logic and use none of your own. You toss in terminology like you just learned it in English class and aren't quite sure what it means, but you think you can get close.

Grow up. Please.

No, actually it doesn't. I am unaware of many, if any, jurisdictions anywhere that could afford to completely waste money prosecuting what is largely a civil crime of no consequence and no real payoff to cover the prosecution. Again, you don't really follow what other people say and don't really use much logic in your own replies. As mentioned, none of the above apply to the comment made, or the situation being discussed here. Totally without relevancy.

Out here, if you call 911 and it's not an emergency, you can usually bet a sheriff's deputy's going to knock on your door.

Identification fraud, by lying about your age? I don't think you can be jailed for that.

However, I'm not age verified, while actually I have another way.
I use a credit card to buy Lindens, this credit-card is known to Linden Labs. And if they do some minor research they see that Dutch credit-card holders have to be 18 or older, otherwise the Dutch banks won't give you one.

And any child bypassing the age check, and being able to login, will be noticed by any other adult. Children have a way of speech, and react typically to certain questions. I have studied human behavior a while back, interesting, and simply by the way children write things, you know they are too young to be here.

Unless you apologize, and tell it's a mistake, then finish the call fast.
Accidents happen, if you say you're sorry, you won't be arrested

Someone hit the relevancy on the head when they said that there is *no way* to verify who is actually sitting at the keyboard at a given time - legally speaking. So, what is LL to do.

Again they have PG areas and such, it would be like trying to stop all the kids of the world from accessing sites they kinda shouldn't. The monkey is outta the tree, can't do it.

It's up to parents to monitor their own kids, frankly; leave me out of it.

The parents should indeed look after their internet usage. Like old times, when internet was still a myth, parents always checked on their children in the playground.

Yeah, they still exist, but do you see children playing outside these days?
I never see them, they're all at home, playing on the internet, without any knowledge about it whatsoever.

Luckily we have programs to block children from doing anything wrong online, but they also get smarter, and hack their way in.

This is where I as a parent would ban him/her from internet for weeks.

Children are still supposed to listen to their parents you know. Things we seem to forget these days.

Yes - and it shouldn't be the responsibility of other places to do it for them.

IMO, LL would lose tons of players should it become like some sort of totalitarian futureworld. What's next, requiring everyone be on cam, so the face at keyboard can be seen and verified over 18? (And if so, why. "Warnings" exist at all mature parcels; just like on certain 'net sites.)

Personal responsibility starts/ends with the person.

Those who don't wanna be around 'kids' online, well, Lol, that's kind of like quarantining kids to an island IRL. Not very feasible/reasonable. One can always stick to the 'mature' sims - isn't there a teen-only grid in SL; adults aren't supposed to be on those anyway! So, I'm not quite sure how anyone 'knows' their SL is being de-funified by actual 'kids' in the main grid. Shrug /me thinks it's a personal thing run amok trying to dictate what others do based upon one's own chagrins.

There is a teen grid, and adults are not allowed on there either. Odd actually, because who will watch over the teens then?

We all know those world without adults fairytale. And we all know how those ended.

Ha, true... lol.

And yes about the teen grid. That seems to solve the problem. I'd think.

Removing the freedom of many for the sake of an outraged few never seems to be the way to go. With a very few, obvious, RL exceptions.

If I had kids no way I'd let them online unsupervised, but they could always do so at a friend's house, etc. It's a different world than before the 'net but I think it's up to parents to help kids practise common sense if they can.

No, really, it doesn't work in the UK. Well, ok, you can get the data to go through by entering your passport or driver's licence number (it might even work with fake data), but as there are no public databases of that info (for UK residents), this is not verification, it's data-mining.

Credit card info would be a good solution. I know that in some places under 18's can get credit cards, but the CC companies must know which of their customers are under 18. Unfortunately the credit card companies have stated that they are not to be used for verification.



Of course it is, and I still have yet to hear even one parent say anything different. This is not about parents asking for safeguards, it's about LL covering their backs.



There are adults on the teen grid - very carefully monitored and checked adults to keep an eye on what goes on there. Unfortunately, teen grid account creation has been broken outside the US for a long time now. Jira here :

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-734

How so exactly. Again, see above about person at keyboard. I can't imagine a lawyer making a case about this.

It makes me sweat that some would lock down every player on SL because of the thorn in the side of a few. The problem imo, is largely imaginary.

LL has already 'covered their backs' as much as they are required to do imo. If a porn site only needs to post "are you over 18" before you can go in, and a click "yes" puts the onus on the viewer, then how is this different. Sims (where teens are not sposed to be anyway according to TOS, again putting the onus on *that player*, where it should be) have the same thing. They shouldn't even be in that grid to begin with. But I don't think any more is required than that warning/agreement notice.

If they require all of that personal info and/or every player has to use a CC many will drop out. A lot of people do not *want* their privacy violated. Nor should they have to, imo. Again why should everyone else pay for what someone else's kids may or may NOT do.

It basically boils down to: to avoid possibly interacting with underage people online... don't go online.


Till a day that make Orwell roll in his grave laughing, there is no way to verify anything about who is currently using the account.

Even LL's manual verification after an age based AR is not sufficient, hence why the same person can be banned again and again for it.

Because they have to assume that the person using the account at that time may have been underage. Either through a hacked or borrowed account maybe.

Depending on how one of the 'innocent' children in need of protecting from the big bad internet gets the information to fill out the forms... they may have committed several crimes up to felony level. But I guarantee mom and daddy are not going to press charges cause little Johnny used their identity... nope they will scream at LL.

And there have been several parents in other threads screaming that LL needs better ways to keep them out, never mind all means of doing so are impossible.

In fact one got heated and upset when I told them: password lock the computer and internet access only when you are present. Those are the only tools needed for good parenting about the bad internet.

I am in Britain, never had that problem while verifying at all. If you really want to verify, you probably did something wrong?

Not really it's rejected my info three times, and I'm in the states. I'm not going to bother with it.

It's a useless system, with no real point other than making folks feel goods... too many ways around it.

The extent to which some people go to resist common sense and simplicity is sometimes astounding.



Another issue that may be better left un typed about, is, well, we've all probably heard of people threatening/bragging they are gonna get someone's RL info. Imagine age being part of that. With all that happens in SL a lot of people having to give the company all their real life personal info, which customer service would assumedly have access to, (however improbable yet possible), would quit.