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- Hacker News
- "Age verification"?? No! It's ID verification. Advertisers will pay a lot more if they have accurate demographic data associated with a cookie.
In a previous job, our company licensed data from Experian, and in realtime, we could attached an Experian ID with every Ad request sent to the Ad exchange(s). It significantly boosted our revenues, enough that the millions we were paying Experian for the data was worth it. This was 15 years ago, so memory is fuzzy.
by mlmonkey - I don't understand why apps need to know anything about a specific age. If we have to go down this road, which I really don't, why can't we just simply have verification whether or not an age fits within a range better yet a category. Yes, age can still be inferred, for example, under 21 or over 21.
- Laws have been written that mandate that applications and services treat various age ranges differently. You can't serve porn to kids, kids under 15/16 have very strict privacy regulations in some areas, and certain content age ratings are an industry standard only because that was the industry way of getting out of being regulated.
For kids this is a privacy risk because there are so many thresholds. Once you're above 18, all you need to care about is "are you a pensioner".
Kids have been lying about their age since the dawn of the internet and people have started catching on, so now we're getting actual restrictions rather than the assertion that nobody in their right mind would click "I am 18 or older" to access a website.
Californian law mandates that operating systems keep track of their users' age, so of course Android must follow. In all of the cases listed on Google's blog, though, the option to not share information and download an app that doesn't ask for your age range is still an option.
by jeroenhd - Because it has never been merely about age only.
They want to track everyone now. Age sniffing is just one additional step for forcing verification. This will continue - see how suspiciously many countries adopt new legislation. It is quite fascinating to me to see how easy it is to kill off democracies.
by shevy-java - This isn't aimed at you specifically, but I think many technologists seem to innately misunderstand the slippery slope hypothesis which helps form the bedrock of American politics.
Too many seem to fall into the familiar problem-solving mode, ready to provide compromises or solutions while forgetting that once the infrastructure is in place, it can easily be modified later to undo the compromises which facilitated its acceptance in the first place. There is an inherent power asymmetry and it's not generally in favor of those building and using the infrastructure.
- Because it's not about age at all. That's just ruse to get a lever to lock people out of their devices if they don't behave.by jasonvorhe
- The API behaves this way:
> To request a user's age range and sharing status, you call the Play Age Signals API (beta) from your app at runtime. The default age ranges the API returns are 0-12, 13-15, 16-17, and 18+, but you can receive custom age ranges.
https://developer.android.com/google/play/age-signals/use-ag...
But I don't find it any better. I don't see any viable reason to provide identification to my phone's OS. If a parent buys a phone for their child, they can already set up parental controls before handing it over.
I wish Motorola all the best with their GrapheneOS partnership.
by dmantis - > in our ongoing partnership with parents and developers by announcing the expansion of the Google Play Age Signals API
Which parents and which developers? How many of them? From where?
- Seriously ready to fully drop google emails and services, i'm using vivaldi + personal email for a while now, the migration was slow a bit painful but complete. Only the phone is still attached to play store and google, but i'm 100% ready to switch to the fully supported Chinese variant of ColorOS and flush Google into the toilet once and for all. But my next phone will 100% be a Sailfish again.by _davide_
- > i'm 100% ready to switch to the fully supported Chinese variant of ColorOS and flush Google into the toilet
Seriously? You replace Google's proprietary software with Chinese proprietary software, one big brother for another? Why not switch to a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone) or maybe GrapheneOS/eOS?
by fsflover - For me to fully drop google someone needs to create something compatible with Android Auto in my car, it doesn't sound like a big deal but that's a big enough thing for me to need it now.by reorder9695
- Even if you drop Google you'll still have a bunch of websites that now also will require age verification.by dewey
- I run on proton for decade and it's not exactly gmail high tech solution, but it's secure.
I have mozilla, brave, waterfox, mullvad and a few others.
It's amazing to see how google and others big companies are marking you as bot.
by creatacc - I doubt the purpose is even age verification. They already can know I have a visa card which is credit card that can be only applied by an adult by looking at the BIN. Why they need my id card if the purpose is actually age verification?by mmis1000
- To verify that your opinions are correctby miohtama
- My Google account is 20 years old, I hope I'm covered by that.by undersuit
- In my opinion, Google makes the UI too complicated and geeky which means parents are less likely to use it. Furthermore, they apply partial solution instead of complete architecture. In the article, the app must actively ask for age which means apps not asking the age, like Telegram still would allow access to inappropriate content.
There should be a single checkbox, "parent mode", which applies government-approved configuration, and the minority who bother, can manually edit it further. Many people are too lazy or not good with computers so the UI should be simple and not what is shown in the screenshots.
There is no need to ask the permission to get age information.
The parent mode should work on "white list" principle:
- only white-listed apps may be installed (list provided by government, parent may edit)
- in those apps ("age-aware apps"), only age-appropriate content is available. In a messenger, only parent- or school-approved contacts may be added.
- the browser refuses to open any web page not having a government-approved signature in HTTP headers (geek minority can add their signatures to the white list). Adult sites are not allowed to have such a signature.
- there should not be multiple age gradations, 3 is enough (adult, teenager, tiny child).
So all parents or store employee should do is to tick the checkbox and set a password or fingerprint for management.
It wouldn't solve the problem completely because there are many irresponsible parents.
by codedokode - Haven't video games solved this a long time ago with age ratings on the games themselves? Sony and Microsoft's parental controls are convoluted garbage with logins galore. But Nintendo's, at least on the Switch 1, was dead simple. You enable parental controls, set an age rating, and password. Done. There's an app to set time limits, whitelist/blacklist games, etc. That was the easiest UX I've seen.
Games (apps) dont need to know the age of the user to access them. Even the parental control didn't know the child's real age. It just knew if the child had access to E, E10+, T, M, etc.
Why are we trying to reinvent this? Oh yeah more data collection.
by aceazzameen - This coordinated worldwide effort at the same time is very creepy.by sunaookami
- It just means politicians read the news.by inigyou
- That's what gets me. It's not like one country demonstrated this then the others followed, it's in parallel. Reminds me of when big US corps kept virtue-signaling around political things at the same time, whether it's now or previous administration.by frollogaston
- I think this is actually a reaction to the over-reaching laws various governments are enacting. This is the way it should work - parents check a box that says "the user is 13 years old", and then apps and websites can see what the parent set.
This is much much better than having to do face scans and credit checks etc. to prove to some sketchy third party that you are over 18.
I think if Google had bothered to do this 5 years ago we might not be in the shitty situation we are now, but it's probably too late now.
by IshKebab - Well, the API itself seems fairly well designed from a privacy perspective. It only shares age ranges, not specific ages, and only if you allow it. The data is also fuzzed to prevent an app from determining your exact birth date, and it's all tied in to the parental control system.[1]
The problem remains though that, since the laws this feature was created to comply with put the onus on Google to verify the user's age and not on the device owner (e.g. the parents), the method they use to determine the user's age to feed into this API is terrible from both a privacy and freedom perspective: they force you to send them a copy of your government ID, and delete your account if you don't comply.[3]
[1]: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/17232873
[2]: https://developer.android.com/google/play/age-signals/unders...
by Ajedi32 - Look, it's just a start. Up next: KYC via Persona to use your phone.
This is kind of inevitable.
by egorfine - Interesting that Google offers a method "age verification by email address" that seems to come close to the popular "my account is already more than 18 years old" argument. Only that in this case, they check on which website the account is used, which comes over even more horrible from a privacy perspective.
Also, the German translation is unintentionally hilarious. They seem to wildly switch between formal and informal pronouns depending on whether the paragraph is about the reader being above 18 years or below.
by xg15 - The API is tied to a Google account though. You can't simply install an app on Android and have Android tell it what the user's age is, it has to first have google maps, youtube, play services, etc. installed and you need to make an account and log in globally on your device before it can tell the app an age. I don't know that I'd call that a good design for an Android APIby Aachen
- Can't we build a gateway in the internet that detects if someone is a influential CEO or something and just bar access to the internet?by xinayder
- What does this have to do with age verification?
- So that they make decisions even more disconnected from reality than now? Sure, why not, that does not harm. Cannot be much worse anyway.by zx8080
- If you have more than 100 million in the bank you should be barred from using the internet...by sschueller