There’s only really so many ways to verify the age of someone that you’ve never seen (actually, it often isn’t all that much easier in person, but that’s another story).
You can treat them as if they’re of-age if they have a credit card, but that’s inaccurate and a violation of credit-card merchant agreements (symptoms include suddenly having to change payment providers).
You can match identification document information against an identification provider like Aristotle-Integrity, but that’s unreliable and fraught with issues, and doesn’t prove that the information describes the applicant.
There must be a simpler way to verify Second Life accounts as adults! Oh, wait…. here it is!
Here’s the latest Second Life age-verification page. It asks you for your date-of-birth (it already has it filled in, if you provided it at any previous time), and asks you to promise that you’re being honest about it.
Now, before you jump up and down about the inadequacy of such measures, I’ll make a mention that this meets the US Federal Trade Commission’s best-practices for age-verification for access to online adult content. That is, the US Government feels that this sort of system is fine.
Well, actually, no – the US Government doesn’t feel that this is fine, however it is the best and most accurate system that it has so far been possible to build, more to the point – that is, nobody’s so far able to effectively improve on it. Everyone’s got deceptively simple ideas on how to do accurate age-verification, most of which are based on false premises. Really, the whole thing falls down as soon as someone pulls out a fake ID.
So, there you go. If you’ve been holding off getting age-verified because you didn’t want to send sensitive identity information to a private foreign firm, now’s your chance to get it done.
| There’s only really so many ways to verify the age of someone that you’ve never seen (actually, it often isn’t all that much easier in person, but that’s another story).
You can treat them as if they’re of-age if they have a credit card, but that’s inaccurate and a violation of credit-card merchant agreements (symptoms include suddenly having to change payment providers).
You can match identification document information against an identification provider like Aristotle-Integrity, but that’s unreliable and fraught with issues, and doesn’t prove that the information describes the applicant.
There must be a simpler way to verify Second Life accounts as adults! Oh, wait…. here it is!
Here’s the latest Second Life age-verification page. It asks you for your date-of-birth (it already has it filled in, if you provided it at any previous time), and asks you to promise that you’re being honest about it.
Now, before you jump up and down about the inadequacy of such measures, I’ll make a mention that this meets the US Federal Trade Commission’s best-practices for age-verification for access to online adult content. That is, the US Government feels that this sort of system is fine.
Well, actually, no – the US Government doesn’t feel that this is fine, however it is the best and most accurate system that it has so far been possible to build, more to the point – that is, nobody’s so far able to effectively improve on it. Everyone’s got deceptively simple ideas on how to do accurate age-verification, most of which are based on false premises. Really, the whole thing falls down as soon as someone pulls out a fake ID.
So, there you go. If you’ve been holding off getting age-verified because you didn’t want to send sensitive identity information to a private foreign firm, now’s your chance to get it done. | |  | |
Tags: Age verification, Aristotle-Integrity, Identity, Linden Lab / Linden Research Inc, Opinion, Second Life, US FTC, US Government, USA, Virtual Environments and Virtual Worlds
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Second Life, where men are kids, women are kids and FBI agents are kids too.
Is that “Age Verified”, as per what you previously needed Aristotle for, or what corresponds to “Payment Info On File”, i.e. allowing the “Adult” setting (but not actually “Age Verified”). Or are they doing away with that distinction?
It’s age-verified as in “you can access adult sims and content”. This verification method is the one recommended by the US FTC for online access as there is no more effective method presently in existence.
That is, however, not “Age Verified” in SL terms. (As per http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Account-verification-types/ta-p/805983 )
The last line can;t be right:
“We’ll spell it out for you: If you are under 18, do not check this box! If you are [under 18?!?] — check it, and off you go!”
I guess is breaking the law now.
The real question is, why wasn’t this the method used in the *first* place….
Actually this does get you “Age Verified” despite what the knowledgebase article says. Many people are not aware that there have been two systems in place, where sims can be created as Adult (so they don’t show up in non-adult Search) but not have Age Verification set. This has been unfair and confusing for Adult sim owners who try to do the ‘right’ thing by asking for Age Verification, only to find that lots of other Adult places haven’t done so and can be visited freely by anyone who can find them.
I tested this and went to a sim that is both Adult and requires Age Verification, which I couldn’t visit before, and the simple checkbox on that page made the difference. It might be flawed but at least it’s simple and clear, as far as it goes.
And simpler still with this fixed:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-1292
Awn, no more googling for Elvis’ documents in order to be allowed in?
Well I’m having a hell of a game testing this, my NPIOF alts are able to access my parcels when I set it to payment info restricted, rather oddly on the new/maybe old project beta profiles they show as payment info on file, they’re not. They can also access parcels that I set as age verified access only, even though they’re not, I did get them account verified by submitting a support ticket but they never used to be able to enter age verified parcels.
My PIOF alts who aren’t age verified can also access age verified restricted parcels, they never used to be able to.
Payment Info on File is a separate setting though. Can you access age verified sims or adult sims? and before or after you tick that box on the new page? Still some confusion then
It’s about time the Lab protects minors the way everyone else does. Second Life is hardly so extremely hardcore as to warrant the handing over of highly personal data for proof of age.
I’m very happy to have registered now. No more crashing into ban lines. Or rather, now I will crash on less ban lines.
@Juko all of my alts can now access parcels set to PIOF, Age restricted and adult sims, I’m not sure what’s going on here, maybe they’ve been flagged through because I’m age verified.
Ah figured it out, they were estate managers so ignored all settings.
While I’ve other reasons for being a bit doubtful about the old process, on the information I had, Aristotle-Integrity were subject to European data protections laws, which put far tighter restrictions on personal data than the US laws which Linden Lab are subject to.
The document I successfully used, when I checked the DPA registration for the related official database, might not be one which Aristotle-Integrity would be allowed to access the database to check. But I know a couple of simple tests which could be applied to the data requested from the document. This new system might not be so much of a loss of certainty.
My understanding of how Aristotle-Integrity validated data was not that they actually matched identity data against databases – as a matter of course – since with only a few exceptions, they simply did not have access to that data. While they had a few sources (such as US electoral rolls, I believe) the majority of matching was done by checking public information (phone books, street listings, checksums in ID numbers, and so on) and then determining how likely it was that the information being presented was correct.
This is *excellent* news for people living in UE and who could not age-verify with Aristotle !
This also pretty much means that LL admits that Aristotle’s folks are crooks, and that the Adult Policy in Second Life is a plain failure that so far only impaired the growth of the virtual world.
This said, I still think they could have kept a payment info based verification (even if it’s no way reliable either: a child could use their parents’ info…. just like what they could do with Aristotle, using their parents ID). It still was an additional step in lying a child must take to “adult verify” that could discourage them.
“This also pretty much means that LL admits that Aristotle’s folks are crooks” – I’m not seeing why one follows from the other, or in what way Aristotle might be crooked.
As for payment-information, remember that plenty of minors have credit-cards these days (yes, they’re usually debit cards or pre-paids, but they’re not really distinguishable otherwise).
Also – as I noted above – using credit-cards as a form of age-verification is specifically forbidden by the card-companies anyway. Perhaps that might be why the Lab has abruptly changed payment processors in the past, I don’t know.
@tatteru
Well, in my dictionary, a crook is taking money for services they only *pretend* to provid but actually never execute properly (when at all): as such, Aristotle *pretends* they can age-verify people world-wide when they actually never could because of many (most ?) countries’ privacy protection laws.
By taking the Aristotle verification down, LL just acknowledged this fact.
As for credit cards verification, banks do not *forbid* it, they just don’t (and indeed can’t) *guarantee* it… Most porn sites do age-verification via credit card info checking…
Also, AFAIK, it is *impossible* for a teen below the age of 16 to get a credit card and any teen below the age of 18 with a credit card should see all their expenses reported to their parents by the bank (at least, it’s how it works in France).
So, any resident with “payment info used” status gained for over 2 years are *obviously* over 18 of age (or they “borrowed” their parents’ credit card info, but every age-verification system is vulnerable to identity theft). It’s sill, in my view, a better guarantee than a check box in a form…