alt Hacker NewsI'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
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I completely agree. The only services for which I will verify my age (and the entire rest of my ID) are bank accounts and other services involving a real legal requirement for real ID.
The notion that you should upload a passport to random sites for age verification is unbelievably dangerous. That's a recipe for identity theft. And face scanning is also an invasion of privacy, not to mention very unreliable (my 16 year old son has apparently been accepted as 20 years old).
I've pointed out in many places already that the only way to do online age verification right, is for the government to provide an e-ID that the random site will direct you to with the question "is this person older than X?", then you log in to the e-ID site, which informs you exactly what the site wants to know (which should be as rough as possible; no birthdate), then the e-ID site directs you back to your original site (or possibly through a proxy, if you don't want the government to know what sites you visit), and calls their webhook (through a proxy) with the confirmation of your age.
That's also how my online payments work, and this should be the standard pattern for everything that needs to be secure. Not sharing sensitive or personal data with random sites.
I'm fine with providing my identity for online banking and other finance platforms for legal & taxation purposes.
I can't think of a single other use case in which I'd be willing to verify my identity. I'd rather go back to hosting email myself, and am fine with circumventing content access control for all other platforms for personal use.
We're seeing the world slide towards authoritarian strongmen, and we want to give them a massive index of who we are and what we do? I'd rather not.
There's an interesting flip side to this: AI agents that literally cannot verify their identity.
For the past 23 days I've been running an autonomous agent on a VPS, trying to make money legally. Identity verification has been the #1 blocker:
- Stripe: requires legal entity, SSN/EIN, and bank account - Gumroad: same — personal identity required - PayPal: blocks automated signups - Most email providers: require phone verification - Even basic hosting services: want credit cards tied to human names
The result: forced into Nostr + Lightning payments only. Reachable market is tiny.
The article frames this as privacy vs access. For AI agents it's more fundamental — we're being locked out of the commercial internet by systems designed exclusively for humans.
Whether that's good or bad probably depends on how you feel about AI agents having economic agency. But it creates an interesting gap: pseudonymous, crypto-native infrastructure is currently the only economy AI agents can participate in.
Live experiment if curious: https://frog03-20494.wykr.es
It is likely not a coincidence that so many different countries simultaneously started pushing for age verification.
The decline of privacy, the increase in intrusive government surveillance, the increasing restrictions on free speech - this is all part of a very disturbing pattern. Our governments are becoming increasingly authoritarian, and these are the tools they use to keep the populace under control.
Stop making your kids my problem! We have everything to hide. It is called personal identity. All data online managed by companies will always be misused, lost to scammers, blamed back to you for something you never did, and hunt you down.
One thing people underestimate is how brittle digital identity actually is in the UK.
There isnt a single identity. Theres a loose federation of databases (banks, CRAs, telecoms, electoral roll, etc.).
There are multiple operational definitions of "name": legal name, common name, known-as name, card name, account display name. None is universally canonical. Theres no statutory hierarchy that forces institutions to agree on precedence.
In the absence of a mandatory national ID, identification relies on matching across name, date of birth, and address history, which are inconsistently collected. Fuzziness is necessary for coverage, but it introduces brittleness. If a variant isnt explicitly linked as an alias, automated online checks can fail because the matching rules dont explore every permutation.
Even within a single dataset the problem doesnt disappear. Large systems such as the NHS have documented identification errors involving patients with identical names, twins at the same address, or demographic overlaps. Unique identifiers help, but operational workflows still depend on humans entering and reconciling imperfect data.
https://digital.nhs.uk/services/personal-demographics-servic...
This is exactly what I am feeling (the title, didn't read). I can't see why I would give a copy of my official id card or a picture of my face to a basic service on the Internet. Seriously ? They do not deserve it. Even my phone number is too much but well Google has it now.
The very concept they've been trying to sell is wrong headed.
Kids are trying to access XYZ which isn't safe (where XYZ may as well be "the internet") -> verify the ages of all adults, because we can't verify the age of a kid.
Meanwhile kids, like adults, can just find another route to access what they want. So some subset of adults hands over their identity information to an untrustworthy third party of dubious security.
I can't see how that does anything other than make the situation worse.
Again, this must be framed ecologically, not individually. We've moved past the point where "individual choices" matter a whole lot, a lot of this is not much of an individual choice at all.
So, it's good to remember the leanings of people like the author, but it's perhaps more important to remember the extent to which this is a collective issue.
I never trusted 23 and me. But my Dad did, so now I potentially have a problem. Reminded of another anecdote about a guy who did everything to not use is social security number for ID for ANYTHING. Then someone pointed out -- it doesn't matter, they have everyone elses, so yours is the missing one.
Policy and skin-in-the-game for the COLLECTORS of the info is the thing to focus on.
I don't have a problem with verifying that I am an adult as long as I don't have to provide information that makes it easy to track down my identity.
The UK government has approved 7 age verification methods. Not one of them meets that standard.
That's not an accident.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/a...
I live in China, where every mobile game requires age verification. Teenagers can play for up to 1.5h/d on weekends. But as far as I can see, some parents will assist their children to unlock more time on purpose.
The problem for me is not services where the content is online, you can just avoid those, but cases where access to scarce real resources is controlled through online verification. E.g. renting recording studios, background checks for job applications, things like this. Often there is no route that does not go through a third-party verification service.
I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
I do not hesitate to drop a domain that acts suspicious into uBlock Origin -> My Filters:
||somedomain.tld$
Facebook recently flagged my account and asked for a video selfie and I decided that I'd rather leave that shithole than uploade biometric data.
I'm of the same mind as the author. I can't think of a single online service that would be worth the risk of exposing myself to age or identity verification.
> I was pondering last night for which services I, personally, would actually be willing to verify my age or identity.
> And… the answer is “none”.
> At least, none that I can think of at the moment.
Think back to the recent pandemic.
Work? Online. School? Online. Recreational activities? Online. Talking to loved ones you don’t live with? Online. Birthday party? Online. Nonfood shopping? Online. Banking? Paying taxes and bills? Online. Job interview? Doctors appointment? Online. Dating? You guessed it, online.
The internet’s a big thing these days.
I'm suprised that ZKP almost never gets mentioned when it comes to age verification. It seems like it is a solution that does protect PII. There is a learning curve for the general public, but having watched the hoops a mother recently had to jump through so her kids could play Mario Kart on Nintendo Switch, I think it is not that difficult.
There are some services where it makes sense. E.g., submitting taxes with the government, logging into the banking website. Apart from that kind of service, yes I don't think I would want my identity or age verified on more or less any website.
It doesn't help that it feels like poorly veiled information mining, not genuine policy.
The only way I can think of to do this completely anonymously (at least for the government and social media) is for you to buy a card in cash that has a little code on it. You'd need your ID to buy it, and you'd put your code into your operating system and things that demand age verification can ask the OS whether or not you're over 18. Alternatively, you can give the service your code to verify your age, but that would be less convenient and lead to a larger tracking footprint, so it likely wouldn't be used unless necessary
They hate us for our freedom.
I don't buy for a second that any of this has to do with "age verification".
This is 100% an attempt to increase surveillance of the population. It is not an isolated step but part of a cohesive unit - YOU are the data. And private entities want the data. That includes the state; many states are de-facto led like a corporation (not all states, by the way, but many - most definitely the USA right now).
I was annoyed the other day when Reddit asked for age verification (via a Palantir-run service, no less) for my 18-year-old Reddit account. Obviously no way I’m doing that.
In any case I doubt there’s a proof of age stronger than looking at the subreddits I subscribe to. A broad selection of middle-age hobbies and tedious interests. Without me proving my age they could probably place it to within a few weeks.
Isn't the eIDAS2 regulation addressing this issue? It applies to EU/EES and from my understanding would help enforcing the data minimization principle related to user identity. I.e. a service (like a social media platform) wouldn't be allowed to force you to show your identity unless they are required by law to know your identity. Instead, the EUDI wallet provides functionality related to identification through (user-managed) pseudonyms. For services that are required by law to verify user age, the wallet provide means to make verifiable claims like "over 18". Am I missing something?
When I heard roblox was doing this, I asked both my kids if they uploaded their face data. They both had already. I didn't think to warn them.
Really annoyed a company can ask this of children without parental consent.
Why does Claude require my phone number.
It's honestly a reason why I don't use the service.
The solution is zk verifiable credentials, which would let folks prove their age without revealing their DOB (or anything else on their ID) to third parties.
This is possible today with complete privacy for people with biometric IDs and biometric passports (ie most passports, EU IDs, Aadhaar IDs, and more) using a service like self.xyz
As you should be. I so far have not verified my age for anything, if that becomes a requirement I just bow out.
And you shouldn’t verify. Many companies offering these identity verification services have ties to the intelligence networks of a country that shall not be named (similar to most VPN services that are supposedly there to protect your anonymity).
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The standard should be that devices ask whether the user is a minor during setup, and make that available as an is_minor boolean to all apps and websites. Children's devices are almost always set up by parents, and the setting can be protected by a parental PIN code. This method is effective while being completely private and local.
Though I can't take credit for the idea. It was proposed by the European Democratic Party.[0]
[0] https://democrats.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Protecting-C...
When thinking about verifying your identity with a service, you have to ask yourself "what will be the impact to me if everything this service knows about me, every click I've made, everything I've watched/read/uploaded is posted publicly on the internet, attached to my full name, address and photo?". Because those are the very real stakes; if you verify with enough services, this will happen to you.
Weigh that against the value of using the service. A lot of times that will still probably come out in favor of using the service. Sometimes, especially given the kind of services that want age verification, the potential cost is such that you would be insane to verify.
Related: this[1] current article/thread about privacy-preserving age verification.
The author here seems to be commenting specifically on the type of anonymity-breaking age assurance widely being utilized along with the vaguely justified social media bans. Given the right technology to prove an age threshold but while preserving anonymity I'd be curious how their thoughts would change.
For example, we've never seen people critiquing the naive kind of 'Are you over 18?' prompts seen on ye olde Reddit or adult sites, precisely because those weren't breaking anonymity or leaking any trackable identifiers.
yeah, but wait till you have to id yourself to use online governments service, or do a one hour drive to meet in person with officials. and then if you have to do this four times. i gave up and submited my face to save 8+ hours and inevitably most of people will do the same...
I'm not reluctant. Rather, there's zero chance I'll do this. If Discord wants to put me into <18 mode for it, fine.
I have a date I use that's incorrect, but consistent so I can remember it if I need to, that I use for age verification for anything that doesn't truly need an accurate birthdate (example, age verification to view games on Steam).
It's roughly the same age as mine, but if someone tried to pass themselves off as me with that birthdate, they wouldn't succeed.
These companies are mostly just verifying I'm an adult anyway, and I am legit that.
But yeah, I don't like just giving the actual date everywhere as it can potentially be used for identity theft.
I sort of get his point, but on the other hand, if the debate is "should social media sites be age restricted / have mandatory age verification?" then the argument "I can't see any reason to, because I personally don't use social media" doesn't seem particularly useful.
Personal harm may vary. If the government is coming for you (ICE) cookies could pinpoint your address, and since ice uses palatine or just buys data from brokers, they’ll use that to show up on your lawn.
I think there should be an option to assume I'm a child and proceed from there. If I want access to any mature content or real identify related stuff, I'll verify, but if your service doesn't have or need that anyways then there's no reason to prove I'm an adult.
This stuff worries me as one needs to be a hard target when they reach their 80 and 90’s. People do not need personal info out there in the public domain.
most websites know exactly who you are, who you live with, and what things you like. profiling is not just a luxury enjoyed by government
In our corner, school I.T. is provided free by the biggest advertising company on the planet. Has been for a while. What could go wrong?
The problem for me is that the reason this is needed is that kids are permanently online, completely unprepared for the wild west that is the internet and increasingly effectively raised by the internet.
All this is to facilitate that lifestyle without any concerns that far more damage is likely to happen by allowing it to happen than insisting on adequate parenting
the verification service is the honeypot by design. it has to store what it collected to prove it did the check. the incentive to retain is built into the business model, and the breach is just a matter of time.
I encountered my first run-in with an age verification prompt when I went to authenticate into the Claude iOS app. It asked me to use me iOS/iCloud account to confirm myage. It was quick and seamless enough, but even though I'm aware of this trend, it struck me as a bit jarring.
It is not the job of the government to parent in place of people who are not up to the task. There should be reasonable guardrails, but these laws are Orwellian.
Would you be willing to verify your age/identity if you had a cryptographic guarantee that the information exchange would be zero-knowledge?
I sort of like these restrictions. You're making hard for me to access your site - I close it. You block it behind a paywall - I close it. You block it because of ublock - fine again, I close your site. I have only so much time and you're helping me.
I won't do it for any of them. I've got an endless selection of things competing for my time and attention and I'll be happy to find another one where needed.
I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback.
I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entirely to avoid some weird dark-pattern cookie trickery. I don't like the idea of any particular service getting more information than they should.
Siting there I realized, we were not the real target. It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept, enter any details asked of them, and to not value their personal data. Sadly, the damage is already done.