How utterly worthless... (Age Verification Implementation)

Yes, absolutely. But it's not my rental sims I'm worried about.

I wonder if you are not IDV, if the Include Mature Flag (or Adult flag?) on the Search Window will allow you to search with that check-marked?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the age verication process in a beta test form at the present? It seems to me that the OP is doing exactly what LL wants residents to do........test the program and point out the defiecencies. And kudos to Ceera for her hard work and extesnsive tests. I'm no where near patient enough to do as she has done.......and evidently not many others on this thread are either. The pointing out of potential problems with the program with honest and well intended questions help to test the program and eventually fix them. But the speculating on LL's "motives" do nothing to further and progress toward a final, reasonably tested system. Thank you Ceera for all your hard work and subsequent JIRA tickets to LL. And I find it very interesting and enlightening to see your results.

Now for my "bitch". A few of the posters appear not to be interested at all in helping LL to impliment a working system for age verification. For whatever reason they simple look for reasons to undermine the system because they very simply do not want to verify their age.........that's fine, no one has said you must. But, rest assured, there will be a system in place soon. It would be nice if it worked reasonably well. There is absolutely no guaranteee that the system will be fool proof. No way with the present technology that someone will not be able to spoof it and circumvent all the "protections" the system is designed to provide. Is Linden Lab doing this for their own protection? Of course they are. Do we get to "piggy back" on that protection? Yes we do. Is a system of this nature neccessary? Only a moran would not believe that. Is it easy to do? I think the past few months have demonstrated that it is not. We all should try to help get a decent system in place and make honest, constructive suggestions instead of whining about how the provider (Aristotal/Integrety) and Linden Lab are conspiring to limit our enjoyment of Second Life. Will it be a pain in the butt? Probably........though with constructive and reasonable suggestions that pain can be much less.

Thanks again for making your test results available to us, Ceera.

"Is a system of this nature neccessary? Only a moran would not believe that."

Perhaps you meant to say... moron?

hehehe backfired joke. She makes a reference to a counter-protester in Texas with a mullet and a misspelled sign. A true classic.

I think you are wrong, and here I am to correct you! This is obviously NOT what LL wants. Quoting the OP:

Actually that is an Arkansan countering a Texan.............get it right


And yes, I might "moron"..........excuse the mistake.

That's a great idea Ceera - put the age verification flag such that it's accessible from LSL.

That way, there can be ejection scripts &c &c - not much, but certainly better than the whole parcel thing.

* * * * *

Hey, I'm actually more disappointed in some countries, than the Company's response to their laws. Imagine if nobody from country X could access SL, because of their laws. What a stupid mess, and think of all the good people who would be denied any access.

Get out there and vote, or topple the king or whatever you gotta do to bring some sanity back to this situation.

It's not the Company's fault, any more than the VAT tax debacle was. They are just stuck trying to make an effort to comply with idiotic first life laws.

And seriously - cartoon sex? Give me a break. Kids would prolly howl with laughter at it, if they saw it, then say eeeeeeewww! Yup, real threat to civilisation, that is.

Unless they change the server to not send object data for to residents that are banned from the parcel. Either banned due to not being verified or access-only or explicitly banned.

edit: uh.. Yeah. _Exactly_ like Love said.

And did LL state that that was the reason the JIRA ticket was shut down? I didn't see where the OP said the reason. Perhaps it was shut down because it's a duplicate. Did you read the blog on further developments of Age Verication. Robin Linden clearly stated that they were disappointed in the process as it is right now. And further stated that if the issues cannot be resolved with Aristotle/Integrity that there are other avenues to persue. The point is the program is in beta.........if you can only point out how LL is merely protecting their collective butts with no suggestions that are constructive then you are not helping. The stated reason for the beta program is to fine tune and get it to work properly. There is no evidence that LL's stated reasons or not true. So I guess I do not accept your "correction" to my post.

Ceera seems to be doing her part. Some here are not.

If someone buys a ring of land surrounding someone else land, and flags it as adult, thus impeding ground access to the land, that would not be too nice a thing would it?

Isn't that what I just said?

Steve Linden "At this point in time, this is by design. If land owners are limiting access to select groups, it is their responsibility to ensure that these groups only contain adults. By design, even if public access is enabled, if a specific individual or group is explicitly allowed, age verification does not apply to these individuals or groups. "

Really bizarre way of looking at things and I don't know why he's closing something that is "At this point in time"

Maybe you could re-open it as a new feature request, you're describing a situation where use of the tools would be a benefit of the verification system and it gets thrown out because you somehow should already know everyone is over 18? How are you going to do that? Agelock?

Oh geez.. Is it Friday yet?

There might possibly be a small number of people who "very simply do not want to verify their age" and are therefore not helping LL to implement IDV
I do believe that most of the people who pick holes in IDV do so because they recognise that the form of "verification" that LL seem intent on implementing is a nonsense.
My beef with IDV is that is being launched on a wave of sickening hypocrisy.

You post is really pushing the limits of mud-slinging.



"Is Linden Lab doing this for their own protection? Of course they are."
Then I suggest that they drop the nonsense and come out to say that up front.
When they stop insulting our intelligence, we could actually start to work together.



"Is a system of this nature neccessary? "
If by "of this nature" you mean a system that will keep under 18s away from 'adult' content, then yes, I believe that such a system would be a good thing. IDV comes nowhere near such a system. It is being misrepresented as one that does.

If by "of this nature" you mean IDV as currently being implemented, then I believe that the system will create more problems than it solves. IDV is a lie, and it's a lie that lessens any protections that children might currently have. It reduces the alertness that should proper in SL. It promotes an air of false security.


"We all should try to help get a decent system in place and make honest, constructive suggestions.."
A lot of decent honest constructive people have pointed out to LL that IDV is wrong-headed in the extreme. Their honest constructive and cogent views have been totally ignored by LL.

Helping to get parcel restrictions to operate such that the unverified can be restricted in all circumstances is an interesting technical exercise....no more than that.
It does nothing to resolve the glaring holes in IDV.


I'm not in the least interested in progressing the new parcel restrictions.
That's not because I don't want LL to know my age. They already have my real date of birth.
That's not because I want under 18's to be anywhere near 'adult' content.


The thing is a crock from day one.
It's hypocrisy, dishonesty, spin.
It does zero, nothing, nada, zilch to 'protect' under 18s from 'adult' content.

That is my whole problem with this. It is continually called BETA, but it has actually been half-assed implemented onto the Main Grid. I would probably be fired it I released my BETA stuff to the general population, especially if it was this borked.

I thought they just started the grid-wide beta last week?

I could be wrong, but I think what they are doing is this:

a) have some stupid little tie-in to verification, but shake down the age verification *process*

b) tie age verification into signups

That way, anyone new coming in would *have* to age verify, thus solving the *entire* problem (except, of course, for new users who can't make it work). Which is why they want to shake down the percentages for those of us already here.

I honestly doubt that a land parcel flag is going to be the end-all of this. And I strongly suspect they will grandfather in old users. Why?

Because let's face it - even if you signed onto the main grid when you were 14, in 4 years you will be legal anyway.

Just my random take on it, don't mistake it for facts.

Payment info used if you're using a credit card combined with Integrity checking your name, address and date of birth to ensure you're not a minor who has been granted a card is a far more secure system than the beta version we have in place.

I'm verified via concierge beta. I won't verify my alts. The information being asked for isn't fit for purpose. I didn't need to provide the information that wasn't fit for purpose in concierge beta because the system allowed you to omit details.

I've told LL this plenty of times. The system actually makes it easier for someone to get verified than payment info used because an adult will never know their details have been used due to the lack of feedback.

You're right, it's beta and we all need to take a breath and understand that, but it's a poor system and we've been telling LL this since concierge and yet the gaping flaws are still there.

So tell me how you would implement a beta test system to get an accurate test? Test it using similated load conditions and scenarios? Wasn't it just a few months ago that we were screaming for proper testing? With this attempt by LL, it seems they are trying to get a true test under real conditions.

And, just how long does it really take to get a program out of beta? The age verification beta test has been released to the main grid or how long now? Two months? Is that too long?

Yes all of this just came about on the Main Grid last week. By definition, BETA is not suppose to be General Release. The main grid is not where BETA should happen if whatever is being tested has the potential to cause a negative unintended affect on the regular users.

It is fine to allow the users to start trying to Age Verify and to deal with all of the problems that come from that. If that was the only thing they implemented at this time, it would not really be a problem - if you can't verify, it would not really matter at this point. However, people can start flagging parcels, yet it appears that the 'person is verified' flag is not actually getting inworld for everyone. Those two items combined make for a messed up rollout that should not have been done because it does apply to the general release and can start having negative impacts on the user community.

Robin Linden, December 9, 2007:

"Accuracy, Reliability and Other Options
Although previous global testing of the Integrity system with a smaller sample showed a nearly 80% success rate, broader implementation has been disappointing, with too many failures. We’re continuing to fine-tune the process to improve the success rate. While the Integrity process is attractive because it offers global matching without any data storage, if necessary we’ll look into other options to ensure that minors are not accessing Second Life or inappropriate content."

This system being testing is not chiseled in stone or signed in blood. It's a test. They know it has problems. They are working to resolve those problems, even if it means scrapping the whole system and starting over. I don't think any concerned person could argue against that statement by Robin Linden yesterday.

It matters not though.......we will have an age verification system in place soon. And CC's are not a legal age verification means in all countries...........the United States being one. They are out for that purpose and continued whining about it will not change that fact.

The actual verifying of people and the implementation of the usage of that information inworld are two different issues. Prior to last week, the general user could not go through the verification process and land owners could not start flagging general main land parcels.

There are a lot of jira issues on the actual inworld implemenation of how verification is seen and used. Most of those issues should have been found via LL testing or on the actual Beta Grid. I am not asking for a perfect implementation. Just one that isn't still as messed up as it was the day they first started having the concierge folks start testing it.

Even if your random take was the fact, they would still need an age verification that actually verifies the age *of the person signing up*. Otherwise the only problem *solved* would be one of appearances only.

I think that you are right to talk of them shaking down the percentages. They want the percentages that can be made to appear to be 18+, just for the sake of appearances.



"...new users who can't make it work" ?
= New adult users for whom Integrity can't make it work.
That's LL's real problem. They won't put up a pretend 18+ "verification" for all on an 18+ service while a significant percentage of users can't supply ID data for someone that Integrity will put a 'Yes' flag on.

It's all about percentages and appearances.

If Integrity could come up with a way of "verifying" a high enough percentage of inputs, there would be absolutely no need for parcel restrictions.

Note that "verifying" is in no way related to the actual age of the people submitting the data. It's all about how far Integrity feel they can safely go in relaxing their checks in the direction of transparent meaninglessness.

I don't believe that the anonymous online submission of some ID data is considered to be " legal age verification means" in any country.

On that basis and by your argument, IDV is "out for that purpose and continued whining about it will not change that".