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

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Growing demands for online age and identity checks — from social media to gaming and porn sites — are colliding with deep distrust of how that data will be stored, monetized, and inevitably breached. Commenters argue that third‑party “verification” firms and ad‑tech ecosystems create powerful surveillance and profiling risks, while governments increasingly push such systems in the name of child safety and combating bots or foreign influence. Proposed alternatives range from zero‑knowledge proofs and government‑run e‑ID schemes to device‑level “is_minor” flags, but many say they would rather forgo services than upload passports, selfies, or other hard identifiers to yet another database.

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.