I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

Baseline attitudes toward ID/age verification

• Many commenters say they will never upload government ID or biometrics to ordinary sites; they accept it only for banking, taxes, or other strictly regulated finance.
• Verification providers are seen as “honeypots”: centralized stores of highly sensitive data that will eventually be breached.
• Several people treat lying about birthdates as standard practice (fixed “fake birthdays,” or absurd years like 1900) and regard real DOB as identity-theft material.

Age‑verification technologies and proposals

• Thread mentions zero‑knowledge proofs, BBS+ credentials, EU age‑verification specs, and France’s “double anonymity” ID scheme as theoretically promising.
• Skeptics doubt governments will actually deploy systems that cannot be used for tracking, or note that current “approved” methods in places like the UK all expose identity.
• Others suggest device‑level “is minor” flags, government e‑ID APIs, or prepaid age‑tokens from shops; each raises questions about circumvention, revocation, and tracking.

Cookies, tracking, and data brokerage

• Huge sub‑thread on cookie banners: some always click “accept,” others always reject or block with uBlock, Privacy Badger, etc.
• Many argue GDPR/cookie law produced “privacy theater”: dark‑pattern consent flows and mass desensitization, while adtech and fingerprinting continue largely unabated.
• Others defend GDPR as at least outlawing some unnecessary collection, while critics say consent-based tracking should simply be illegal.
• Concrete harms cited: dynamic pricing, insurance and healthcare discrimination, law‑enforcement/immigration use of ad‑tech data, and behavioral exploitation (e.g., wage setting based on credit data).

Generational differences and conditioning

• Some older users are shocked that younger people unthinkingly accept cookies, share emails, and trust app stores.
• Counter‑arguments: today’s “digital natives” interact with files and devices constantly, but mostly through app silos; understanding of systems and risks is shallow.
• Several people note safety improvements (fewer obvious malware catastrophes) have weakened vigilance.

Children’s safety vs adult privacy

• Strong disagreement on whether age‑gating the entire web is justified to protect children from porn/social media.
• One camp: “parenting, not surveillance” — stop making kids everyone else’s problem; device controls and supervision should be used instead.
• Other camp: youth mental‑health issues and predation are real; if platforms refuse effective moderation, political pressure for blunt age laws is inevitable.
• Many point out these checks are trivially bypassed by motivated kids or helpful adults, so costs fall mainly on adults’ privacy.

Government, surveillance, and democracy

• Widespread fear that cross‑site identity will enable censorship, social‑credit‑like scoring, political repression, and fine‑grained price discrimination.
• Others argue pervasive sockpuppets/bots and foreign influence operations are already corroding democracy; some level of identity assurance may be the “least bad” fix.
• Thread notes a pattern: multiple jurisdictions moving simultaneously toward ID and age verification, alongside broader trends of declining privacy and expanding surveillance.

Practical coping strategies

• Common tactics: fake DOBs, multiple “real” identities, email aliases per site, aggressive ad/tracker blocking, cookie auto‑delete, VPNs, and simply abandoning any site that demands ID or face‑scan.
• A nontrivial minority shrug and accept everything, arguing they’ve never seen personal harm and the friction isn’t worth it. Others respond that harms are systemic, delayed, and often invisible.