Tootfinder

Really good clear explanation from @…, laying out various problems and risks with trying to implement "age verification" online.
"Firstly, in order to prove your age you’re being asked to hand over some fairly important personal details. ... Usually the company you’re handing these details to is a third party, often one you will never have heard of before. ...
"The data that is being collected for age verification purposes is extremely tempting to hackers ... and at the moment there is no specific regulation outlining the security standards that these companies should meet ...
"Let’s say all the current age verification providers are incredibly robust, though. ... The question still remains... should you be sharing this information with random websites anyway?
"... once you’ve trained the population of an entire country to routinely hand over their credit card details in order to access content, you have given them an incredibly bad habit that it’s going to be tough to break. ... You don’t just prove your age once, after all, you potentially have to do it dozens of times, to access a bunch of different websites. Everything from BlueSky to PornHub to Spotify and even maybe Wikipedia. It becomes a weekly or perhaps monthly occurrence. Just as individual users don’t tend to read every website’s terms and conditions, it’s unlikely they’re all going to do due diligence checks on every provider who asks for ID, especially once they’ve become used to just handing that data over.
"And although that may not be a problem for _you_, you tech-savvy cleverclogs, if you’ve ever found yourself in the position of unpaid IT support for one of your less knowledgeable friends or relatives, hopefully you can see why it’s a huge problem for the UK population more broadly."
And more!
#AgeVerification #OnlineSafetyAct #OSA

"Let’s be crystal clear about what this law actually accomplishes: It makes it harder for adults to access perfectly legal (and often helpful) information and services. It forces people to create detailed trails of their online activity linked to their real identities. It drives users toward less secure platforms and services. It destroys small online communities that can’t afford compliance costs. And it teaches an entire generation that bypassing government surveillance is a basic life skill.
"Meanwhile, the actual harms it purports to address? Those remain entirely unaddressed. Predators will simply move to unregulated platforms, encrypted messaging, or services that don’t comply. Or they’ll just use VPNs. The law creates the illusion of safety while actually making everyone less secure.
"This is what happens when politicians decide to regulate technology they don’t understand, targeting problems they can’t define, with solutions that don’t work."
- Mike Masnick
#OnlineSafetyAct #OSA #UKLaw