Comment by cocoto
13 days ago
The real and robust method will be generating artificial video input instead of the real webcam. I really don’t think any platform will be able to counter this. If they start requiring to use a phone with harder to spoof camera input, you will simply be able to put the camera in front of a high resolution screen. The cat and mouse game will not last long.
> I really don’t think any platform will be able to counter this.
Do platforms want to counter it?
Seems to me with an unreliable video selfie age verification:
* Reasonable people with common sense don't need to upload scans of their driving licenses and passports
* The platform gets to retain users without too much hassle
* Porn site users are forced to create accounts; this enables tracking, boosting ad revenue and growth numbers.
* Politicians get to announce that they have introduced age controls.
* People who claimed age checks wouldn't invade people's privacy don't get proven wrong
* Teens can sidestep the age checks and retain their access; teens trying to hide their porn from their parents is an age-old tradition.
* Parents don't see their teens accessing porn. They feel reassured without having to have any awkward conversations or figure out any baffling smartphone parental controls.
Everyone wins.
I think you forgot :
* authorities get to selectively crack down on sites for not implementing "proper" age verification. The sites never had a widespread problem with grooming to begin with but just so happened to have a lot of other activity that the authorities didn't like.
Having everyone operate in a gray area is dangerous and threatens the rule of law.
Discord does have a problem with grooming.
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It depends. If the law says "you must perform such-and-such steps to verify age" then no, they don't care if you can counter it. If the law says "you must use an approach that is at least x% effective" then yes they do care if enough people counter it.
We already had a half-assed solution, where websites would require you to press the button that says "I am over 18". Clearly somebody decided that wasn't good enough. That person is not going to stop until good enough is achieved.
How about just requiring browser, OS vendors, and phone makers to give parents real child accounts that are easy to use and keep kids off the Internet?
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Until somebody (likely a politician or anti-porn advocacy group) decides to poke the bear and ruin it
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If we normalize this shit everyone will lose.
> Reasonable people with common sense don't need to upload scans of their driving licenses and passports
Cue random bans.
> People who claimed age checks wouldn't invade people's privacy don't get proven wrong
And? Is that supposed to change anything?
> Everyone wins.
Only if the lawmakers agreed.
> Porn site users are forced to create accounts
I'm curious the sites that enforce this like 'your state has banned...' what traffic loss they have. Because I'm not gonna sign up for a porn site lmao, the stigma
Don't Windows Hello camera devices have some kind of hardware attestation? I'm sure verification schemes like this will eventually go down that path soon.
My guess is that's probably one of the reasons Google tried to push for Play Store only apps, provide a measurable/verifiable software chain for stuff like this.
That the camera is real doesn't imply the thing it's viewing is real.
You're not wrong, but I have had to do video verification over a phone once, and it seemed quite advanced. It would flash through a number of colors and settings and take probably 30 frames of you. I presume they're checking for "this came from a screen and not a human", but of course I have no idea how it works, so I don't know if it's truly sophisticated or not.
As I understand it, 'Windows Hello' requires a near-IR image alongside the RGB image.
It's not the fancy structured light of phone-style Face ID, but it still protects against the more common ways of fooling biometrics, like holding up a photo or wearing a simple paper mask.
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Windows Hello cameras are all "depth" cameras so a flat photo won't pass muster.
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Yes they do. Part of the reason why you can't use certain webcams that are Windows Hello compatible (I.e. with IR) in recent versions of Windows.
IIRC they had these fingerprinting pads?
They already support ID checks as an alternative to face scanning, if the latter proves to be untenable then it's literally a case of flipping a switch to mandate ID instead.
The long term solution would have to be some kind of integration with a government platform where the platform doesn’t see your ID and the government doesn’t see what you are signing up for.
I don’t this will happen in the US but I can see it in more privacy responding countries.
Apple and Google may also add some kind of “child flag” parents can enable which tells websites and apps this user is a child and all age checks should immediately fail.
I do like the idea of the “this is a child” taint (ok, terrible name but I really think it should be a near-unremovable thing on a platform like Apple’s that’s so locked down/crypto signed etc).
Like, you’d enroll it by adding a DOB and the computer/phone/etc would just intentionally fail all compatible age checks until that date is 18 years in the past. To remove it (e.g. reuse a device for a non-child), an adult would need to show ID in person at Apple.
Government IDs could be used to do completely privacy preserving, basically OpenID Connect but with no identifying property, just an “isEighteenOrMore” property. However, i agree it’ll never happen in the US because “regular” people still don’t know how identity providers can attest without identifying, and thus would never agree to use their government ID to sign into a pornsite. And on top of all that yeah nobody trusts the government, basically in either party, so they’d be convinced the government was secretly keeping a record of which porn sites they use. Which to be fair is not entirely unlikely. Heck, they’d probably even do it by incompetence via logs or something and then have people get blackmailed!
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> where the platform doesn’t see your ID
ID checks aren't very worthwhile if anyone can use any ID with no consequences.
How long would it take for someone's 18 year old brother to realize they can charge everyone $10 to "verify" everyone's accounts with their ID, because it doesn't matter whose ID is used?
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this is already how the EU infrastructure for digital ID works, basically. Using public/private keys on your national id, the government functions as a root authority that you (and other trusted verifiers downstream) can identify you with and commercial platforms only get a yes/no when you want to identify yourself but have no access to any data.
South Korea also has had various versions of this even going back to ~2004 I think.
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I see this currently being pushed by some politicians in the EU. And I have a slight suspicion that some of these politicians are literally lobbyists.
The "oh my god, think of the children" is similar to "oh my god, think of the terrorists". I am not saying all of this is propaganda 1:1 or a lie, but a lot of it is and it is used as a rhetoric tool of influence by many politicians. Both seems to connect to many people who do not really think about who influences them.
ID is much easier to forge, it's just a flat 2-d shape. None of the physical security features come through in images.
In functioning states, the ID contains a chip with a private key that can be used to sign a message, and ID verification would not be an image of the ID card, but rather holding your phone's NFC reader to the card and signing a message from the site.
In Japan, there are already multiple apps which use something like this to verify user's age via the "my number card" + the smartphone's NFC reader.
It's more or less impossible to forge without stealing the government's private keys, or infiltrating the government and issuing a fraudulent card.
Of course, the US isn't a functioning state, the people don't trust it with their identity and security and would rather simply give all their information to private companies instead.
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When I had to prove my passport for my bank over a video call they told me to rotate it around in the sunlight to show that it had the holo-whatever ink. So I wouldn't put it past them.
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They can't feasibly do this in the US since many people don't have drivers licenses or passports.
Don't you have to be over 18 to get a credit card in the US? How many wouldn't be able to present a CC or ID?
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Those without driver's licenses or passports can get a state ID card instead, if I'm not mistaken. A pain, but an option.
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Yeah that’s not true. It’s a lie. And we all know why it’s a lie. Adults in the US with ID is 99%
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wat. the majority of Americans have a DL, ID, or Passport. What a silly thing to say.
For DL alone:
>Data indicates that approximately 84% to 91% of all Americans hold a driver's license, with roughly 237.7 million licensed drivers in the U.S. as of 2023.
Add in an ID and Passport and we are likely closer to 99%
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Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Card (CAC) credentials used by US government & military via NFC already work on web browsers. States should just move to digital IDs stored on smartphones, with chain of trust up through the secure element...
This is extremely dangerous, and would only work with hardware/software that is nonfree (i.e., not under the user's control, or any attestation could be spoofed).
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> Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Card (CAC) credentials used by US government & military via NFC already work on web browsers. States should just move to digital IDs stored on smartphones, with chain of trust up through the secure element...
I think you're... missing the point of the pushback. People DO NOT WANT to be identified online, for fear for different types of persecution.
And lose every user in the process
Is there any data on what kind of hits to enrollment were taken by facebook, gmail etc when they added requirements like a phone #? Maybe it's buried in their sec filings. Anyway, this "cat and mouse" game is probably irrelevant. They're not looking for and don't need a perfect system. Bc 99% of the public couldn't care less about handing over their information.
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I think you massively overestimate how many people actually care.
My guess is that 95% or more of all Discord users do not care and simply upload their selfie or ID card and be done with it. I know I will (although they did say that they expect 80%+ to not require verification since they can somehow infer their age from other parameters)
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Is there any data on what kind of hits to enrollment were taken by facebook, gmail etc when they added requirements like a phone #? Maybe it's buried in their sec filings.
Most people under the driving age don’t have ID’s, at least in the US.
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> The cat and mouse game will not last long.
Yes but for completely different reasons: I will not bother to play the game and stop using the platform.
you counter this by using an id verified service like login.gov or okta verify.
That's the endgame and what the EU really wants. No poasting unless they can arrest you for inconvenient memes.
Yes this is spot on. Apple & Google mobile platforms are locked down tight for this reason. Try installing okta verify on graphene OS. You cannot.
They're getting worse with attested and validated environments. This one of the reasons that google is trying to kill sideloaded apps and checking for root access.
Weird thing.. the people who want this validation fully expect for you to pay for, maintain, keep it valid, and pay for upkeep/service for their desires. Honestly, this is something that SHOULD get very aggressive pushback.. but most people accept for no reason.
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Wow. The EU.
yes, avoiding EU fines and ensuring availability there is most likely the motivating factor behind the change.
Alternatively, hand someone $20 and your phone and have them do the verification for you.
This is just what I did, and plan to continue to do.
You can just use a video from YouTube there are people that do it that just don't care
There's no need to counter it, the whole point is to hit the social aspect of being on these platforms. If even half the kids can't figure out how to make it work, then a massive part of the problem is solved because a much larger percentage are only using it due to network effects.
Actually, there are many ways. For example they change colors on your screen and check in real time how it reflects on your face, eyes, etc. Very hard for a model to be trained to respond this quickly to what's on the screen.
They also have you move your head in multiple directions.
You could always generate a random face model with real time rendering with enough details to trick any AI detector (or even human) and then you can do real time animation to orders or screen light tricks. You could also simply use some face filter on your face and these ones are really convincing these days (like on Snapchat and such).
Show me such a model.
It would be interesting to see a model completely indistinguishable from a real human in behavior, as well as real-time reflection off different surfaces, etc.
The next step would be to make a complete digital clone of a person based on surreptitiously recording them with hidden cameras. I doubt it's possible.
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Apple is believed to be adding multispectral imaging to future generations of the iPhone. This and 3d mapping are more than enough to defeat the "point the camera at a high res screen" trick.
The issue is that age verifiers (like Discord) are not really trying.
They could do what a bank does and run everyone's ID through chexsystems. It's really hard to defeat this. Fake identities don't exist in the system and stolen ones would get flagged by geographic, time of use and velocity rules.
Doesn't work for places like Australia, where the social media ban applies only to under-16s. Teenagers rarely have ID, especially in countries where the minimum driving age is higher than 16 (read: most of the world outside the US).
The concept of identity doesn't necessarily have to be embodied by a piece of physical plastic that goes into a wallet.
Ad-hoc identification can occur via other means like dynamic knowledge based authentication. The sources of this mechanism can be literally anything. Social media itself being one obvious source for the target cohort.
You can walk into many US financial institutions without an ID and still get really far using KBA workflows. The back office will hassle you for a proper scan of a physical ID, but you can often get an account open and funded with just KBA.
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But how many users will do so? 1%? 5%?
Also, they will probably find that out, and the moment people do so, they become suspicious to state actors. I understand the rationale behind the work around you described; I just don't think it will be a huge factor. I see this elsewhere too - for instance, I use ublock origin a lot. But how many people world wide use it? I think never above 30%, most likely significantly fewer (or perhaps all anti-advertisement extensions, I think it most definitely is below 50% and probably below 30% too).
Death Stranding 2 photo-mode works well for this.
There is an easy solution to this - require a government ID, and only permit government IDs that can be verified with the state's government.
There are a lot of countries and US states where such validation is possible.
Given the state is mandating these checks, it only makes sense that the state should be responsible for making it possible to perform these checks.
Remind me again, why do people need government approved ids to access discord in the first place? Everyone in this thread is solutioning how we could make government ids work, but no one seems to be asking if that’s a good idea.
Well, certainly not for linking all of your online activities with your real life identity of course, not sure where you got that idea from. It's to protect children. And of course, just in some very limited anti-terrorism cases...
I've heard a politician explicitly request a real name policy on all internet platforms in Germany. Obviously the goal is always mass surveillance.
Because governments really want people to think about children with naughty stuff.
Gross.
(I'm not verifying anywhere unless required for official business. Still have my non-KYC sim for people)
Manufacturing consent at work
You require a human to identity proof in real life and bind that to a digital identity with a strong authenticator. Anti fraud detection systems can suspend or ban if evasion attempts are detected. Perfect is not the target, it doesn’t have to be.
See: Login.gov (USPS offline proofing) and other national identity systems.
(digital identity is a component of my work)
>You require a human to identity proof in real life and bind that to a digital identity
That's going to be a no from me, dawg. I'm sympathetic to ID checks like if you're buying beer or whatever, but not linking my real life identity to discord or whatever.
You have to show ID to buy beer?
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Why should anyone inclined to want to buy beer have to show ID to do it?
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Not my call, it’ll be the law of the land. Some may leave, but most won’t, and that’s good enough for corporate and enterprise value purposes.
Pornhub is fighting state age verification and keeps losing state by state, for example.
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Which is by nature transient. There are many more and quite dangerous strings attached to doing this online. You never know if all parties involved in the verification are trustworthy.
> you will simply be able to put the camera in front of a high resolution screen
Are you sure it's that simple? How high does the resolution need to be for the camera to not be able to tell? And I'm sure there are sublet clues. Remember, you can't modify the photo or change the camera.
I did this with OBS Virtual Camera for a thing in Oregon and it worked.
This is the right question. Who will benefits from blocking young people? Probably not the platform.
hardware attestation webcams :) . in the dark future of the 2k there is only windows
you put a flickering light, pwm creating artifacts in the video and have it apologize for it, to hopefully break some watermarks. my led light started acting up since yesterday, i have no other bulb.
If it was that easy, Face ID wouldn't be used
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