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Unfortunately for some of us, the UK has gone the opposite direction. We now have to verify our age (or use a VPN) before accessing certain websites.

https://theconversation.com/porn-websites-now-require-age-ve...

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This is fine if you have a secure tool to access. It's not okay if you just try to spin up your own solution.

There is no "secure tool", there is no secure way to verify ID online right now, none of these companies can be trusted to do it properly. Just last week a bunch of my personal info was implicated in a breach of a background check company who supposedly knew what they were doing.

A private way of doing this is absolutely 100% viable with some cryptography and government support. Apparently nobody gives enough of a fuck to even try.

As for the UK's new 'porn ID' law, people are going to die. People will take their own lives when their porn browsing habits are inevitably leaked. Private companies cannot be trusted to keep their hand out of the cookie jar, they WILL link peoples' histories to their real IDs.

How hard would it be to securely receive an image, securely check that image against a database, return an answer, and then delete the image securely?

Of all the things we do, it doesn't sound that difficult, to be honest.

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