No Stupid Questions

In principle it should be possible to do a zero-knowledge proof.

This means that the website asking for age verification asks a yes/no question like "Is this user 18+?" and the age verification service (like a digital ID provided by the government or whatever) answers "yes" or "no" accordingly, but without telling anything else about the user. Also, the verification service should ideally not know who asked for the age verification.

So the site you want to visit only knows the thing they need to know: Whether you are 18+ or not. Nothing else. And the age verification service only knows somebody asked for age verification and provided the answer, but do not know which site you visited.

This is all possible, but I don't have high hopes this is the intended implementation of any government seeking age verification, so don't get your hopes up.

Even if it works, it’s a solution without a problem. If I can afford internet access, I am mature enough to see anything on the internet, and I am mature enough to decide which users can access my internet-connected network and whether they can have access to the whole internet. That’s all the age verification needed ever.

The request for age verification by each website is purely about unnecessary control and censorship.

The problem is not the system or the idea of age verification

The problem is that no one on earth can be trusted with that level of monitoring, control and power.

Its possible.

Open source front-interfacing app + a secure element thing in the backgound.

You download an app. You verify your identity, then the app sets up a OTP thing with the shared secret seed lasting for 30 days. But every 30 seconds the OTP changes. Everyone doing a verification in these 30 days gets the same exact secret seed.

The seed hides in the secure element of your device. (it won't be impossible to extract, but the average kid is not gonna be able hack a secure element) Every 30 seconds, it releases the new OTP to the Open source app. The app doesn't connect to the internet once the OTP has already been set up. So nobody knows if you actually view the OTP code.

So the government only knows you have the verification OTP set up not which websites you visited, the website only knows you have a valid OTP from the government, but you could be any of the people in the past 30 days (which the company don't even have access to).

Even if the company and government cooperates, they could only pin down the time of website registration and that you are one of the millions of people that did the verification and requested a OTP Seed.

(Idk the exact terminology for these things, but hopefully I make sense)

In my ideal world, it's not an issue because parents don't let kids under a certain age or demonstrated maturity level have computers in their room alone, and even better, they teach their kids how to not have problems with predators, porn, and the deluge of online weirdness and have open, honest talks about how some things are dangerous because they prey on you, some things are dangerous because they get you hooked on certain feelings, and some things are dangerous because they give you false impressions of the world and relationships.

We're about as close to that world as interstellar exploration, I know. Imagine having parents who you don't feel afraid to talk to about mature topics and personal matters.

And all that aside, why is it such a big deal that kids not see boobs but they can see violence and gore? Why is it magically okay for Timmy Neckbeard to watch strangle-fetish porn night and day as soon as he turns 18? Why do we scream about how porn is ruining kids minds but we're not taking down the grifting "masculinity influencers" with as much zeal as we're going after pornhub and other sites that are mostly just consenting adults doing fun biological acts together? Why do we say porn companies are evil and not do anything to make it less evil like better regulations and resources since we know people are going to find ways to make and view it anyway? (These aren't questions for Lemmy but I would sure love to see communities start asking these questions to their elected representatives.)

Our species' obsession with clear lines and labels is making us ignore where the actual problems are, we build fences around the outcomes not the sources. We create solutions to problems we don't even want to look at directly. It's like the government handing out umbrellas to combat the issue with the massive water main leak flooding the street.

Yes. Look up "zero knowledge proofs"

The government knows who you are. They know your age, your address and know you exist (probably).

You go to a site that requires ages verification. You say:please verify me with the government portal. You go to that portal to get a temporary id code to give to the site. The website says to the gov portal give me the name and age of the user with this temp ID. You approve that access. Portal sends age (or an is over 16/18/21 etc flag) to the site.

• Gov portal doesn't need to know who the site is.
• You don't provide a unique ID to the website, just a temporary one.
• as if codes are temporary, you must have access to the id/login now, not just at some point
• Site only gets the data you approve/it requested,.not everything.

The process can do with some streamlining, but should work in practice?

Zero-knowledge proof. Medium has a practical example, though unfortunately the article logs user data, so beware on that.

Nope, you always need a middle man to do the verification. That middle man has too much information.

Also, if you could solve for the middle man, there is no way to know the user belongs to the ID. It can easily be stolen.

It's possible with certificates and 2fa issued by a government, which already have all your data, that would only verify that you are over 18.

We already have that in Spain, sort of. We have a government app where you have a digital id stored and you can make it create a verify qr that only shows if the user is over 18 or under 18, no more data. The qr only last 5 minutes active.

It is necessary? Not for internet access. That's a duty of the one paying for internet in the household, not the government. If they have underage kids under their responsibility it's their duty to make sure that they get good education about what to see and what not and restrict access if needed. Having the government to universally interfere everyone it's just plain bad.

Yes, it is, see quark ID as an example of decentralized open source project by the city of Buenos Aires, in Argentina, which leverages zero knowledge proofs:

https://quarkid.org/
https://github.com/ssi-quarkid

Depends on how reliable you need this system to be. For example, do you need to handle the scenario where an adult verifies their age to access a website, then lets a minor use that website in their place? That would be a much harder problem to solve than if you just need to verify that an adult was present on the other end at one point in time. For the latter, device-based age verification seems to be trivial to set up from a technical standpoint while fulfilling that criterion.

1. Sign up for age verification platform and upload your government ID on the platform (let's call this platform Age Verifier).
2. Age Verifier confirms you're an adult, and lists you as an adult in their system.
3. Age Verifier purges your government ID and any PII on you. The only thing they keep is your basic account details and the fact that they've confirmed you're an adult.
4. The next time you login to an adult site, you verify yourself by logging into Age Verifier's platform. The adult site confirms with Age Verifier that you're an adult, and you're good to go.

This system probably works, but it's not without its downsides. We'll need a way to confirm that your government ID and PII is actually deleted on Age Verifier's platform. A way to deal with this might be to make sure Age Verifier is never driven by profit so they'll never need to look into selling people's data. Maybe it could be ran by a non-profit? Or perhaps it can be ran by the government? But if you don't trust the government, that could be an issue.

And I can also see an issue where one guy who keeps creating different Age Verifier accounts, verifying that the account is an adult, and then selling that account to people.

Yes, but your government doesn't want that.

It's only possible as long as you trust the people you're giving your information to. So...no.

If anyone is doing actual work trying to solve this please DM me, I'm interested in helping.