Age verification

Nice Firefox - I'm never less than impressed by your near constant display of haughty arrogance and aloofness regarding these issues.

As supremely confident and superior as you are, why don't you and the rest of the sneering individuals on here who will be so glad to see everyone walk show us how it's supposed to be done by being the first ones to cough up enough of your identifying data for any moron with $20 and a box of business envelopes to completely re-create your identity, open bank accounts and obtain charge cards in your name, cash your paychecks, and commit crimes which will be traced back to you using your identification?

My brother accidentally left his SS card in a pouch in his gf's car several years ago and it got stolen. Imagine his surprise when he got arrested for fighting in a club some time later and upon reaching court for that got slapped with 2 of the thief's residential burglary charges? It took him a year worth of incarceration to get out of that because the thief got arrested using his name and almost got him a 15 year prison sentence. So don't tell me there's no danger and everyone is whining over nothing.

Can't wait until somebody buys a gun or rents a car using your identification and commits a crime with it, and then they come back registered to you. Where's your smart mouth gonna be then?

Looks like this has come into play already. A couple of my friends (who I luckily have on MSN) have been struck with providing I.D.

They have been 'Cold Turkeyd'. Their accounts instantly suspended. One friend owns a shop in world which he usually updates frequently, but now things will be ruined due to being inable to access the ingame world, or these forums! I'm sure people here have been shut off too, you can't even access the damn official forums?! Absurd. Even more Absurd than requiring to provide PERSONAL DATA for an online game. I think i'm more annoyed than my ex-in-world buddies.

So people can't continue their SL voyage because they can't provide I.D 'online' which is prone to photo manipulation anyway. What's stopping some 13 year old changing a few details on a photo/fax of a passport or Licence.


So if my friends refuse to provide their personal info to some man on the other end of an email, they can't access the game or official forum no more?!


Absolutely sickening, gastly, absurd. Especially when real money is involved when creating businesses/ owning land.

For shame.

I'm quite scared of this. This is truly a horrid idea! I'm all about protecting kids and such, but not to the point where I have to remain unknown and enjoy about 15% of the game. Charging more for this mediocre game is unrational and many people will end up threatening to leave because of this! I for once, lost major interest in this game - as to continue playing, I'll have to remake my ENTIRE account. But even then, the extra charge for YOU to verify MY information is totally unacceptable. I choose who verifies MY information and it should restrict people from enjoying this game. You've completely alienated probably 3/4 of your player base with this moronic move!
You've heard from me, and this is totally stupid!
I hope your proud of it though. No one should have to pay YOU to verify OUR information to play YOUR game, which survives partially on OUR subscription fees!
Not to mention the land people own (money)
Lindens people buy (money)
It's all about money to you people!

You want to protect kids? It's simple! Ask for a birthdate. If it's under 18, duh...bar it. Yes, this would involve double checking the identity, but not at the owners expense! If you're so worried about it, spend your own damn money to prevent kids from playing!
These are things you should have thought of before you released the game...
Then again, if you truly were worried - you would have put the game on the market (not free download) and required age verfication upon check out at the game store (such as driver's license etc.)
It all comes with risks, but you are making a huge mistake with this move!

Just to add to the paranoia:

Fun things to think about when you give out your Personal Info- Keyloggers, Hijacked webpages, spyware, etc.

I think half of us will be using dead people, so we're not worried.

The rest of us will only be giving the bare minimum, which, at best, can unique identify that **A** person exists, not nessessarily that that person is the user (the required feilds are Name and Birthdate--everyone I talk to on a daily basis knows that much).

I have a personal grudge against giving ANY personal information to ANYONE outside my family. I don't care what kind of encryption you use to transmit this data, nothing is fool proof. There are tech savvy hackers out there who can crack the best databases with the strongest encryptions. Even on that point, all it takes is one slip up and someone flips the wrong switch - the entire database is open to someone who knows that they're doing.

With my purchase comment I made earlier, yes - there is the chance that someone can get an older friend to buy the game for them. Even then, you don't need all of this crud to verify someone's age. A name and birthdate is all - both of which I will provide if needed very hesitantly.
But all this crap about needing SS numbers, Driver License Numbers etc. forget that.

LL, if you really want to make this work - you had better discover some way to make it so YOU pay for it, not your already paying customers who spend money with your game in terms of land, lindens etc.
You're obligated to verify us, so making US pay for it - is quite moronic.

With ID theft the way it is in the world... absolutely nobody should give out their Social Security Number.

Age verification... in my personal opinion... is a good thing. IDENTITY verification is way too much like George Orwell's 1984 for my blood.

I am all about protecting the little ones... but let's have some protection for the big people too LL, this is too far.

I was in the beta for Age Verification. They only asked for the last 4 digits of my SS #. How it works is, Integrity already *has* the whole thing. They just want to see if the information you provide matches. This is what people don't seem to understand. They already have all this info. Not Verifying isn't going to change that fact.

For American SSN's, they have the info, most probably.

Outside of the US, they don't have all that info, which is why people have verified without providing passport or driving licence numbers.

You know anyone who tried using a (published) SSN of a dead dude?

Nope... I don't know anyone who has commited fraud, personally... lol

I have heard rumors of rumors of that happening. But firsthand, I don't. I would agree it's a flawed system in a flawed world, I'm sure there are ways around it, just like anything else.

I dunno... personally, I don't mind an age verification system in place which requires all users to at least verify their age. As for the rest of the ID verification stuff though... not comfortable with that.

No.

This is stupid.