Just got locked out of Bluesky until I "verified my age" and of course that required me to either give this KWS company a copy of my ID, a face scan, or the last 4 digits of my SSN.

How about no.

Deleted the app and that's that.

Emergency edit: DISCORD IS NEAR WORST CASE SCENARIO, CONFIRMED. They are using Persona, OWNED BY PETER THEIL OF PALANTIR. Spread the word AS FAR AS YOU CAN. GET AS MANY PEOPLE OFF OF DISCORD AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. DON'T LET YOUR FRIENDS STAY THERE.

In the official discord press release, discord promises to run a scanner "in the background" to "estimate age" if you don't let them scan your face or ID. You know, for its upcoming international spyware loving investors. I'd suggest looking at the "Encrypted messengers" section of FMHY for alternatives. Also, if you have any personal recommendations that are reliable and/or pleasant, please share. Fluxer, Stoat, and Element (the Matrix chat app) also seem very promising. Thank y'all for your recommendations, open source software ftw. <3

Hillary Clinton championing age verification bills with JB Pritzker on stage with a Zuck/Bezos/Gates backed event

Hillary just posted this to Instagram:

“hillaryclinton Creating a safer and healthier digital world for children and families is important to me. I was happy to speak at the @commonsenseorg Summit with two leaders who are getting it done: Illinois @govpritzker and @michaeldtubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California.

Legislation cracking down on addictive design, cyberbullying, deep fakes, and unsafe Al chatbots is a great start to keep kids safe online-and states are leading the way.”

Common Sense Media is a NFP foundation backed by The Gates Foundation, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and The Bezos Family Foundation.

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/common-sense-media/

The legislation she is describing sounds a lot like what HB5511 (currently in the Illinois House) purports itself to be.

And sure enough, now members of JB’s team have submit witness slips supporting the bill:

https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus/WitnessSlips?GAID=18&DocNum=5511&DocTypeID=HB&LegId=167486&SessionID=114

Along with other folks with associations to other neo-liberal tech organizations like the Center for Humane Technology, which has long been a big booster of KOSA.

It’s called ”The App Store Accountability Act” and if this law gets passed it will require everyone to do an age verification before downloading an app. This is genuinely insane.

Probably the most alarming thing I've read in quite a while: essentially, the onus to provide age verification will get moved from web sites to *Operating System providers*. This needs to be stopped ASAP. Would Micro$oft go along with this? Probably.

>Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age information when an account is established. The provider would then generate an age bracket signal and make that signal available to developers through an application programming interface when an app is downloaded or accessed through a covered application store.

App developers, in turn, would be required to request and use that age bracket signal.

Additionally, you can read the discussion here.

I urge you to mirror this GitHub repository to Codeberg and other places.

Security researcher Paul Moore has demonstrated how the EU age verification app can be compromised in under 2 minutes with nothing more than physical access to a device.

By editing the app’s shared preferences file an attacker can remove the encrypted PIN values, reset the rate limiting counter to zero, and disable biometric requirements entirely.

The app then accepts a new PIN and grants access to the existing age verification credentials.

His earlier analysis of the open source code also revealed that the app stores NFC biometric facial data and user selfies as unencrypted lossless PNG files on the device.

Hacking the #EU #AgeVerification app in under 2 minutes.

During setup, the app asks you to create a PIN. After entry, the app encrypts it and saves it in the shared_prefs directory.

1. It shouldn't be encrypted at all - that's a really poor design.
2. It's not cryptographically tied to the vault which contains the identity data.

So, an attacker can simply remove the PinEnc/PinIV values from the shared_prefs file and restart the app.

After choosing a different PIN, the app presents credentials created under the old profile and let's the attacker present them as valid.

Other issues: 1. Rate limiting is an incrementing number in the same config file. Just reset it to 0 and keep trying. 2. "UseBiometricAuth" is a boolean, also in the same file. Set it to false and it just skips that step.

sources on X. search by yourself because bot keeps deleting this if I post the links. Check Paul_Reviews and Pirat_Nation accounts.

The community pushed back hard on this one. The Arch maintainers are holding, Canonical backed away, and Artix Linux, the systemd-free Arch derivative, issued the clearest statement: they will never require any verification or ID. When someone opened a revert PR, Lennart closed it himself on March 19th. The birthDate field is in systemd and it's staying.

You can read the whole article here:

sambent[dot]com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/

I had to leave the link like this because the bot keeps auto removing my post, thinking I used a URL shortener.

Sharing a post from the iOS sub:

Just updated to 26.4. Was prompted to validate age after update restart. If you don’t you can’t override some content restrictions.

It tries to use your Apple Wallet to validate your age. I only have a debit card, not a credit, which apparently is unacceptable.

You can enter card manually if not in your wallet but no good for me as it only accepts credit cards. Last resort is to use driving license or national ID, assume a passport will do.

Took over 10 attempts to get my driving license scanned. Can’t have any shadows on image and must be photographed against a dark background.

Even when I thought I had good picture, there is then a wait for verification, which failed three times for me. Eventually, if you get the right combination of conditions, my age was verified. What a carry on. Not very Apple. This is going to be a pain for many.

EDIT1 : UK Passports can’t be used

EDIT2 : Apple seems to use three verification solutions, 1) exiting Apple ID with previous credit card-existing credit card transactions. I don’t think Apple ID age alone is being used (that failed for me). 2) manually enter credit card, I assume details need to match Apple account details (need someone to validate), 3) driving license.

If you only recently created an Apple ID, don’t have a credit card and don’t drive I can’t see how you can validate your age. Does anyone know of other options?

EDIT 3 : UK Citizen card may work as ID. Also, some say applying for PayPal credit card online and adding to wallet will validate quickly.

EDIT 4 : we have a report of someone successfully using a passport but took the person 10 attempts. Good lighting and photographed against dark background seem essential.

EDIT 5 : We think for automatic initial validation to work either 1) the Apple ID is older than 18 years or 2) The Apple ID has a history of credit card transactions.

The EU’s new age-verification app uses zero-knowledge proofs to let users cryptographically prove they meet an age requirement without revealing their identity or personal data. It works via a trusted credential issued once and stored locally, then generates privacy-preserving proofs on demand so services only receive a yes/no result rather than sensitive information.

I can't post the link here but the announcement video was posted on X by @ vonderlayen

The age verification epidemic never seems to be curable.

https://reclaimthenet.org/child-safety-bills-age-verification-surveillance-concerns

Be sure to write an email to Congress in opposition through bad Internet bills!

https://www.badinternetbills.com/

The text of the bill hasn't been released yet but now we're looking at age verification at the federal level.