International spread vs age verification

Recently a study (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1425) from comScore split that the SL population as following:
Europe: 61%
North America: 19%
Asia Pacific: 13%
Latin America: 6%
Middle East and Africa: 2%

Did Linden Labs do any decent research on how to achieve age verification from all these regions before announcing it? Obviously a scheme covering only the US, 16% of SL population, would be the same as banning 84% of residents out of the affected parcels.

To my knowledge no existing company has pulled this off upto now. You can gamble, visit porn sites ... with the mere statement that you are over 18 years. Verification is at most the fact that you pay by credit card.

Options I see:
a) We won't see any age verification in the next few years
b) We'll see age verification but it'll be only available to few residents (less than 10% of SL population)
c) We'll see age verification available to most people but with no added value beyond what you get today by having payment information

Note also that most, if not all, schemes people will think up are easily fooled. True age verification requires 2 things:
- The person requesting verification
- An authorative indication of his age which you can crosscheck
Unless LL invites people over to the office what prevents an underage to identify himself as one of his parents?

Wonders the locations of the asian areas
Japan
China
Korea
Southeast Asia
India
( and others i not including )

I think there are more users from China that are chinese 3% ( wil have no problem getting ID Proof Total AVE 3%

The Japanese users ( real Japanese living here less then 1% if that( The one hold Passports from USA EUROPE 2%) will have no problems providing proof. Total AVE 3%

Korea maybe 1% holding USA and Eurpean PASSPORTS ( Koreans REAL ONES 2%) Total AVE 3%

Others Roughly not counting non native users with in theose countiers they were born more then the 13% the are saying that are using SL.........

I don`t believe these figure to be correct. Because they don`t hold in account the NATIVE users not the ones hold NON NATIVE PASSPORTS.

Just because some is currently living in a country does not mean they are native to that assumed country WHAT SO EVER!. SL and their gathering of population location dimgraphics has always been fudged and off target when meansuring the medians of the Diamographics would put shame to even the 1 year univeristy students.

Usagi

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Think about it ----->Asia Pacific: 13%<------ This is not true and can`t be! unless they are factors in the WHOLE SOUTHEAST ASIA Region! NO WAY Those number are right!

Key......... WORDS Native USERS of Counties

Which is not possible to measure correctly in practical sences

Hence those stats are untrustable and unrealistic

More then less those coming out of Japan ( for example ) are mostly American. Europeans stationed here NOT Native USERS of Japan

On a side not of possiblities many a few have "Dual Citizenships" from Japan and hold Both Passports like my Child does. So measuring the
Hence they have proof in passports to provide to LLABS

medians of the Diamographics are not even close to being correct

I think the number of Japanese SL users is far greater than the number of expat non-Japanese SL users in Japan, at leqast judging from the numbers I've personally met.

It's also worth bearing in mind that expats would almost certainly not be in any searchable database (and so be unable to age verify by the preset proposed standard), except by passport. And no sane person would give out passport numbers over the Internet.

No warda.........your assumping too much its not possible

Just because the signup page ask for your Diamographics does not mean its the right ones choosen.....Some RP to every MM of RP to the extent of laieing about their Diamographics location

Also you did not look at this part as well

Its usually reasonably easy to spot genuine Japanese people from gaijin by the language ability.

Your looking in a stats that is unrelated.......

Look at how i formated the relational in my above post.

Also Japanese have less spendable income and liesure time. They work ave 10 or more hours a day. Taxs alone kill us
You live in a Western world Japan .....You have spendable income and free time ( and have taxes return that you pay when you purchase items here We Don`t
Japanese don`t ( most i mean) and they would not spend their free time here. Also as a side note Japanese are also less likey to stay inworld because of trends in liesure activities. What might be fun to us one day is not another day.

to remind everyone that Asia/Pacific does not only include Asian countries. You have Australia, New Zealand, all the Islander countries to name a few... if you're going to discuss demographics at least speak about the true demographics not just your little piece of the world.

~B

Laying aside the controversy surrounding verification requirements, why are you under the impression only US users can get verified?Reference:
http://integrity.aristotle.com/index.php_option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=46.html

You actually believe marketing hype?

The only existing robust systems for verification are hardware based and require electronic ID's and physical presence. Any system that claims to be robust based on input provided by a user is a hoax.

If you look at the SEL on their page you may get a good hint on how "robust" things are as it gives you a sample of the kind of data you need to impersonate someone.

To test the robustness in full I figured I could test it live at BUD.tv. It asks me for my name, birth date and zip code (something my 8 year old can manage to type for me), then after submitting it produces a time out error (robustness for the win ...)

Not exactly as convincing as what the PR dudes managed to type on the webpage.

I love nihonjinron.

Oceania Population

"The term Oceania is normally used to designate all
the islands of the Central and South Pacific area
including Australia (a continent) and New Zealand. "

To be correct here....................

Usagi

Maybe Oceania has that specific meaning. I'm sure it does. It's equally certain that the company making that survey chose not to use that classification, and instead lump Australia and the pacific islands into "Asia/Pacific".

shakes head.............. whatever Warda

Many websites do include oceania in the Asis-Pacific group.

This is just a fact.

Check the BBC site as an example.

I did not refer to that......You just miss the point

Irrelevant. I was questioning the assertion that "a scheme covering only the US, 16% of SL population, would be the same as banning 84% of residents out of the affected parcels" - not the dubioius technology involved. it is a fallacy that 84% of residents will be excluded from the verification process. however flawed and messed up that process is, it will be available to many people outside the US.

I don't really see why our real life locations or real life information should be involved in our "second lives". i mean this is just a virtual world. It isn't like it's a foreign country we just moved to... I've never had to give my social security number to any of the online games i play or any online services. I am told not to give it out to anyone unless its a government office or a job that I'm applying for. i see no reason to give this information to linden lab. Also we all can see the point at how this type of age verification will not work for other countries since each country takes different measures to census their citizens.

Sorry that was just meant as an example but I can see how using US as an example may be misleading. For the purpose of the example you can replace US by Germany (same percentage anyway). Goal was to show that due to demography you need a solution that truly spans the globe.

My main point were the 3 options:
a) We won't see any age verification in the next few years
b) We'll see age verification but it'll be only available to few residents (less than 10% of SL population)
c) We'll see age verification available to most people but with no added value beyond what you get today by having payment information

For me Integrity is category c. It offers no value compared to payment information.

A category b solution would be one where people would be required to give more secret information like the PIN of your bank card. Obviously this would require a system where the card issuer is involved. I do for example have a card reader that reads my bank card and that can work in a challenge/response system. My PIN is hence never transmitted but I need the device, my card and my PIN to get the response to the challenge. By cooperating with the bank a challenge/response session could lead to a verification of the bank that I'm really me and the bank could also verify I'm over 18. Downside is obviously the fact that this requires hardware on the client side and that there's no one shot system available, you'd need to integrate with all kind of parties endlessly (and would still rule out countries that are less advanced).

Where do these statistics come from, anyway. No one has ever asked me where I live, or what country I am a Native of.

Every site you visit will have this information, unless you use proxies.

Well if they know where we are all from, why do we have to verify that again? And if a lot of people are using proxies then all these metrics are skewed and are meaningless.

On first sight your idea has physical presence of an adult including ID card but:
What prevents anyone to walk into a store and buy cards with the purpose to give them to minors? The problem with your proposal is that you split acquiring a verification from using it. Hence you only guarantee that the person who acquired the verification is over age and it can be anyone so it's not hard for a 15yo to find an 18yo who can buy it.

True age verification must link some personal information to the account in order to ensure that whoever acquires it is trackable. You could hence have the clerk only issue the ID's after linking them to the personal info. For example he could enter name, birthdate and public scratchcard code in LL provided software which then subsequently encrypts it and sends it to LL. When you use the card you enter name, age and private scratchard code. LL then matches and grants access if everything is fine.

Obviously the drawback of your solution will be the immense costs associated with setting this up (which will be reflected in price) and the fact that it'll end up being something that will still requires LL to store info on you for it to have some value.

While entertaining security discussions on these kind of topics always end in the same way: lawmakers must accept that true accountability is always on the users end as long as there's no foolproof way to do verification. In most European courts this should actually work out just fine with things as is.

But not necessarily practical. Providing a full passport number is more sensitive than the last four digits of your SSID (though that is not so good either). Leaving aside those non-US people that don't even have passports.

And this is just to play a game?

When there is a netful of adult sites you can access just by answering "yes" to the question "are you 18 or over"?

It is out of all proportion.