Age Verification is here!!

gah, it has to do with being stretched to the absolute limit in Iraq. So much so there's not even enough resources and National Guard left in the US to deal with natural disasters. New Orleans as an example.

yeah... let's go back to the issue of identity verification please. LL is dealing with the same freaking issue that the German adult industry and other online services had to deal with in Germany before. It's not like there's not a ten year history of hysteria in Germany over this issue of the childrens seeing explicit things they should not see, and omg the child porn. Which is a bad thing of course... but the carriers aren't to blame, the abusers of children are.

BTW, let me also emphasise that Germany is a lot more liberal when it comes to general nudity than the US is... they aren't as concerned about nudes as they are about actual explicit sex. But I'm sure that will be borked by putting American moral standards into play.

The legal adult industry snarks at their silly attempts to force USB sticks on everyone with a fetish from the Netherlands and Sweden, which are still quite sovereign from German laws... believe it or not. And given how people still tend to feel about Germany in those countries, not exactly a surprise to realise that they will always have their own leaders separate from each other.

UK. Verified with passport number. Instantaneous.

Whether that's verified or BS "tick-it-anyway" I don't know. I forgot to accidentally mistype the number to try it out. Options are drivers license and passport.

Just confirming stuff.

I was able to verify late last night, so it looks like whatever problems they had with Canada are sorted out. I used my drivers licence.

While I suppose it is possible they have some deal set up with my local ministry of transportation to allow them to bulk-check DL numbers, it's much more likely that they're just running a verification on the DL number itself. In Ontario at least, your DL contains your date of birth (and gender) built right into the number.

So it's quite possible they don't check anything other than to see if the birth date you filled on the form matches the birth date that is 'hidden' in the drivers licence number.

-Atashi

Well, since I didn't believe aristotle/LL would have these databases, I tried verifying with just name, address and DoB - I left the number field blank and the type of number set to "please select" - and hey presto it verified me!

I wish now, I'd tried it with even less information, just to see how much or little it actually checks for UK residents!

Matthew

well hey i guess the kiddies are safe then.
guess ill go ahead and verify then. as a pom.

I'm just stunned. Hopefully they'll retain the 'payment info' details in our profiles, because that system is clearly more robust and trustworthy than an identity verification system which doesn't require you to enter valid or corroborative details at all.

One time kids had to steal a parent's credit card.
Now they don't even have to do that.

I welcome age verification...

Now before you get out your torches and pitchforks and chase me... Hear me out....

I feel that age verification will help keep the adolesent teenagers off the main grid who feel that its "cool" to pelt random people with melons, cages and so forth...

What I don't agree with is the method that they are using.... First off, a third party developing the software? How can LL 100% say that this company didn't include some kind of code to secretly store this data... Correct me if I'm wrong... but didn't we put our date of birth in when we registered? What's the difference between then and now?

I don't mind handing over my real name and date of birth... I have qualms about giving my address, but hey.. If my information is sold... all the advertisements that I would receive go directly into my shredder..

I think most people here have the problem that they have credit cards on file and now they want a real name, a date of birth and either a driver's license, passport or last 4 of SSN#? I put my debit card info on here (don't use credit cards anymore since I ran into a problem with them). I WILL NOT however, give the info that could potentially be used for identity theft in addition to my bank info.

If I have to age verify, my payment info will be promptly removed before hand. And I seriously suggest that to others... Its better to deal with people calling you paranoid then having to deal with trying to clear your name after your identity has been compromised...

/me gets off soapbox

Last night I put out a notice to all tenants that Age Verification was upon us and that I would be marking all the parcels as mature. I am willing to set aside a PG space, however, but explicit content would not be permitted to be kept there, because I don't want anyone to be displaced because of the new policy. So far, the few responses I have had seem to indicate that people are completely blasé about age verification and they'll be happy to do it. Maybe that will change once they see what they have to give up, but it may not be as big a deal among the populace as it is here.

Among most the people Ive talked to about this stuff in game - they didnt see age verification as an issue.

No one wants to display much identity information though, those who do just gender and age.

Of course some people dont want to verify.

And others are stridently agaisnt it even handing out informational notecards - someone posted one on Umbra notices last night.

As the posts immediately above yours confirm, an age verification system that doesn't actually require any valid information at all, will not keep adolescent teenagers off the grid.

It's more difficult for a minor to get payment info on file using the old system than it is for them to get verified with the new.

Espeically since the questions usually would go like this:

----------------

MOM can I use you credit card?

What do you need it for?

Want to buy something online. Its only $10.

K Ill come and help you in a minute.

(You never leave your kid alone with your credit card unless you are like Bill Gates or something)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

MOM can I see your Passport?

Sure hun its in the File cabinet.



---------------------------
---------------------------

Of course I wouldnt let my teens use either unsupervised now that I know how the new wave of Indentity verification is going to work online.

But thats pretty typical.

I speak with the first hand experiene of having two teeenagers with internet access.

Well, unless the system was broken when I tried, the conversation in the UK could be:

"Mom, how old is dad?" (I'm assuming that the child probably does know their own dad's birthday, and that no self respecting women would actually give their *own* age even to their children )

(since as mentioned above, I verified without entering any SSN, Passport, Driving License number...)

That said, I know of a number of reference volumes which can be found in the public library which give name, address and DoBs so spoofing the verification system doesn't seem too difficult!

Matthew

I had my identity stolen. debit card. bank fought it. got everything back (I think . . and it took about a year). now if it had been more money in my account, or if the bank hadn't fought it, or if they had gotten more than the debit card number . . . .shudders. . .. yes I agree. I'm not giving out more than I have to, and this is more than I have to just to visit a nice place.

it was right after I did something on paypay that the identity theft thing occurred. I will never again use paypal, and I haven't had a problem since . .. last I checked . . I fear looking . ..

actually . .. . have you looked at their bra and panties and swim wear section? I'm not sure I've seen a Sears catalog in a while, so I'll use JC Penny's in it's place. Hustler is too graphic too . .. something

Important comments on this subject from Reuters' interview with Phillip Rosedale:

Reuters: Is there a problem where German laws are more restrictive than American laws on ageplay? And likewise, American laws may be more restrictive than European laws on gambling. Are we moving to the lowest common denominator?

Philip Rosedale: No.

The lowest common denominator is just not what you want to do. It’s not going to happen on the Internet, and it’s not going to happen here. We’re doing what we can as a platform to try to make that the case.

If you want to apply a local jurisdictional law to people, we’re going to make it so you apply that to people who are individual avatars trying to go to one place. That’s what we’re doing with age verification. We’re making that a feature that’s tied to land and people, not a feature that’s tied to the whole system. When we’re confronted with a legal or regulatory matter where we need for legal reasons to enable a certain type of restriction on behavior, we do that as locally as possible and not have a lowest common denominator.

Reuters: So there may be code in the future where your avatar is tied to your real-life nationality and then based on that nationality certain restrictions may or may not come into play?

Philip Rosedale: Right.

If the local restrictions that countries for example are making on avatars, if those restrictions are well-published and transparent and in the public light, I think we’re going to get to a good overall set of choices. Countries will make the right choices about how they want to restrict people’s use in Second Life if they can see what other countries are doing rather than us being the sole decider of what’s right locally.


So ID goes beyond the ageplay and kids-on-the-grid problems, which are serious enough. My reading of this is they want to prevent silly laws in one or two countries from being enforced on and affecting everyone on the grid, and ID'ing will make it possible to limit enforcement of Crazy National Law X to citizens of Crazy Country. Seems to me a much lesser evil than subjecting everyone to the most restrictive laws or making SL unavailable in certain countries.

How the hell am I supposed to know as a land owner who from what country is allowed to view my content?

Looks like in the UK you don't need mum's passport or driving license at all. Just a number that matches the correct format. Well, I assumed that until I heard Matthew had verified by leaving the number field blank. Gad, that's just ridiculous.

We are being taken for fools here. Sounds like hard data _is_ being corroborated in countries where the system is workable (Ie. USA), but they're only pretending to have a workable system in countries where it's not.

Although they think having an office with a data operator's license in the UK gets around the sticky EU exporting data to the US issue, it could backfire on them bigtime because every piece of information they request must serve a purpose. We know passport and driving license numbers are not being used to identity people here (it's simply not possible) so it's pretty clear that _something_ untoward is going on.

And the worst part is those idiots don't understand that their behavior is why the rest of the world hates them.

Very true.

I guess what I took from that quoted text was that LL was thinking about adding a code such that all "restricted" content may be blocked for all avatars from a certain country, based on LL's reading of the laws of that country. Of course, that would really only protect LL if the typist's country of residence was "verified" ... which is at least one reason I fully expect that this verification scheme, when it becomes fully rolled out, will simply be required to access all of the grid (and if you happen to live in a country that has restrictive laws, you won't be able to access these areas even if you have verified your personal details).

God fucking damn. Get this shit out of this thread, it has nothing to do with what is going on here.

http://www.sluniverse.com/forums/Topic17099-99-1.aspx

John A.
Phillips

Aristotle
205 Pennsylvania Ave., SE
Washington, D.C. 20003, USA
Tel: +1 415 440 1102
Fax: +1 415 440 2162
[email=jap@aristotle.org]E-mail[/email]



John Aristotle Phillips is co-founder and chairman of Aristotle, the political technology firm. Party organizations, candidates and corporations on 5 continents use the company’s technology solutions for winning elections and influencing public affairs. Aristotle’s expertise covers strategic communications, online fundraising, voter targeting, election dispute audit and compliance, voter registration and Get-Out-The-Vote operations.
Company websites include www.voterlistsonline.com, www.aristotle.com, www.campaigncontributions.com and www.verifymyidentification.com.
Privately held, investors in Aristotle include William Hambrecht and Rupert Murdoch’s E-Partners.
Mr. Phillips graduated from Princeton University in 1978 with a Bachelors of Science Degree in Aerospace Engineering where he received international recognition for his undergraduate physics work in the field of nuclear weapons, proliferation and terrorism. He is the co-author of Mushroom, upon which the movie Manhattan Project was based. Aristotle is headquartered in Washington DC, with offices in Atlanta and San Francisco, and a data warehousing facility in London.



I don't know about anyone else, but I will NOT be verifying, thank you very much SL, it's been a good run.

Erm... I do. All internet access on all computers is logged by PC/Domain account and I check it regularly. I might also add that our passports, birth certificates, driving licences and national insurance cards are kept in a locked firesafe which is just a sensible precaution from many perspectives.

The only point I was making is that people seem to think that using a CC is sufficient to prove age, wheras certainly in the UK visa cards are available from age 13.

I was an Amsterdam estate manager and regularly had to eject kids and AR them.

Personally, I think that as many layers of verification should be put in place as possible, making it increasingly difficult for minors to access adult content. A combination of the new age verification PLUS CC info PLUS repeated billing of a few pence/cents a month with a purchase description of "SL ADULT CONTENT" would sort it out...

There is a typo in the URL for the Integrity/Aristotle site, but it is indeed the same folks that LL is using. The way I read this is that Aristotle had early success in politics (it was used by George Bush to help steal ... er, win, the 2000 election). However, Aristotle appears to have been surpassed by newer technology (http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1323463,00.html).

So Phillips et.al. decided to use its data mining engine to enter the Identity Verification market. My conjecture ...

Too bad he didn't stick to making Weapons of Mass Destruction.