The other side of removing age verification

Recently Visa and Mastercard has decided that they do not want their cards used as "age verification" methods, as per their website and Merchant Rules document:

1. All Visa accepting merchants have a responsibility to adhere to all federal and state laws. As it relates to accepting Visa products, merchants must accept Visa products for legal transactions only.
   
2. Merchants that sell age-restricted products, such as alcohol and tobacco, must have in place processes and controls to ensure that all associated laws are honored.
   
3. Merchants should be aware that possession of a Visa card or submission of Visa account information does not signify that the cardholder is of legal age to purchase age-restricted products.
   
4. The issuance of Visa cards is not restricted to individuals over 18 years of age.
   

So, they now require that ALL transactions be for a valid purchase of goods and services, and not as an age check. Additionally, like they clearly state, you don't have to be 18 to have a credit card. So the point is kind of moot.

There is NO way they are going to be reliably be able to keep teens out of the adult grid or vice versa.

IF your premise is:

Credit cards aren't foolproof in indicating that the person using one is over 18

AND

you point out that the credit card companies themselves say that credit cards aren't 100% foolproof in indicating the age of the user

THEN

what is a reasonable approach?

a. Use credit cards since they are better than nothing, and likely quite a bit better than nothing.

b. Use credit cards AND instill yet another level of verification.

c. Don't use credit cards since they aren't foolproof. Have nothing at all.

coco

P.S. And what Io said.

And do you know how easy it is for someone to walk into any store that sells "throwaway" credit cards to buy one, load it, and use it? Anyone who has cash can get one, no age check required.
CC# is not a valid ID. Throwaway cards are easy to fraud with.

There only "foolproof" way of age verification is social security number, but that would exclude the international market, and not to mention now the law won't allow you to ask for it.

I'm kind of tired of repeating this, so this is the last time I will say it.



A CC# is an ID. An ID means that if you are an adult on the teen grid, SL knows who you are and can even notify authorities if you are stalking minors, and they can certainly make sure that you don't get back on the TG (unless you have unlimitted credit cards.) Same goes for kids on the adult grid. This is a simple matter of some, any kind of verifiable personal identification versus none at all, and unlimitted alts which make "banning" anyone a joke.

I don't know how to make this concept any clearer.

But I will try this analogy:

I have a home, and I want to keep people I don't know from walking into it. Or taking things out of it. Or coming in and harming me or my family.

I put a deadbolt locks on my doors. The windows have locks, too.

I keep them locked. I keep the bushes around my house clear, and take all the other advice for making your house a poor target for buglary.

When someone rings the bell and I don't know the person, I talk through the door - I don't open it to them.

If I live on the first floor or on a fire escape in a large city, I bar those windows. (Which I have in fact done.)

I lock the door when I leave the house.

Now, is this foolproof against crime?

Of course not. I was burgled even when conscientiously taking all the above steps.

Does it mean I might as well not bother? Of course not.

It would be irrational of me to stop bothering the lock the doors, or to look at people ringing the bell before letting them in, and so on and so forth - just because I know these steps aren't 100% foolproof in preventing the things I'm trying to prevent.

That would be called, "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

The world is not a case of 0/1. Of yes/no. Of, "If not all, then none."

Because I bother, my house isn't a particularly easy mark, and suffers less crime than other, easier houses. Moreover, it can never be said that I haven't taken reasonable steps to prevent being burglarized or worse.

It might even be assumed that I have prevented a certain amount of crime from happening to myself, my family, and my property by taking those precautions.

I know these precautions are not foolproof, and that I could still be burgled again someday (or worse), by a particularly intent and tenacious criminal. Most, though, will search for easier pickins.

Reasonable precautions. That's all anyone can do. It is all the law expects people to do. Not to take reasonable precautions in certain situations is called criminal negligance, and prosecuted as such.

And the above isn't even talking about the foolhardiness of inviting hundreds of thousands of strangers into a place of adult entertainment and not bothering to card them at the door.

And it says nothing of allowing everyone in with no means of ever tracing who they were, should something bad happen to another resident.

All I can think is that LL plans to get rid of the "over 18" designation of SL.

Perhaps they intend to rely instead on M and PG designations of game areas, and on this notion that we, as parcel-holders, are "websites" on LL's "internet", and as such, LL would hope, any litigation would involve us, not them.

coco

Io, they can only use that CC as ID in the first place if they CHARGE the card. Perhaps you didn't get it the first time. Visa/Mastercard will not allow merchants to use their cards as age verification any longer, which means you can't just "validate" a card any more unless you plan to place a charge on it. Therefore, in order to use a CC as a form of ID, they would have to get rid of the free accounts.

Io, they can only use that CC as ID in the first place if they CHARGE the card. Perhaps you didn't get it the first time. Visa/Mastercard will not allow merchants to use their cards as age verification any longer, which means you can't just "validate" a card any more unless you plan to place a charge on it. Therefore, in order to use a CC as a form of ID, they would have to get rid of the free accounts.

Ah, I see. But weren't they doing a thingie where they charged and then immediately refunded? Or am I remembering wrong?

*sigh* I'm beginning to like the idea of having them pay for new accounts. I mean, I did, my husband did and so to did a friend of ours. Why not the rest of the world?

I know, I know, the numbers of people joining will decrease and deities forbid that be allowed to happen! Seriously, charging 5 dollars and go ahead and give them their 250L or even 500L to experiment with doesn't seem unreasonable to me. It's still cheaper than what many of us paid for our accounts!

*mutters* There has to be a better way than this, though. Seriously, no verification at all is just a lawsuit waiting to happen, which would cost LL more than the 'possible' revenues from the free/unverified accounts! Not to mention that they'd have to work their butts off to conteract the negative publicity if someone like Jack Thompson heard about a lawsuit against a game company that knowingly removed a stumbling block for pedaphiles and allows teens to see "naughty bits in action". He'd be peeing himself in joy to finally have an example for his cause!

Changes to Teen Grid Registration
Anyone whose birthday indicates they are between the ages of 13 and 17 is invited into the Teen Grid. Although there is currently no perfect way to verify that someone is the age they give us, we want to make sure that the teens on Teen Second Life can be confident they are dealing with other teens, and not with adults who do not belong on the grid. Therefore we are reinstating the payment information requirement for anyone entering the teen grid. In addition, we will be posting a warning to anyone entering the teen grid who is in fact older than 18, and misrepresenting their age to us. That warning states:

"Warning to adults: Teen Second Life is a service offered to minors only. If you provide false birthdate information in order to access Teen Second Life, Linden Lab may provide your personal information to any law enforcement organization or private litigant investigating your activities."

Update, they are reinstating the check for the Teen Grid:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/2006/06/update_open_reg.html#more

Update, they are reinstating the check for the Teen Grid:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/2006/06/update_open_reg.html#more

This shows that they have finally been convinced that they buggered up in removing CC verification. Do they *really* not think these things through before they implement them?

Of course, now that the teen grid will require verification and the main grid won't, doesn't that just encourage teens to join the verification-free main grid rather than asking their parents for their CC?

Anecdotal proof: Do you know anyone who has been so victimized? Do you know anyone who knows any one who has? Media sensationalism is a bad way to gauge incidence of Bad Things especially those of extremely low incidence. The greatest molestaion risk by a factor of a zillion is from family members; you can't ban them by MAC address.