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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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)

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>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.

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.

Porn site fined £800,000 for not rolling out age checks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990755 - February 2026

Why should anyone inclined to want to buy beer have to show ID to do it?

Because you’re required to in all 50 states to prove you’re over 21.

I don't think that's true? Rather, stores must not sell to anyone under 21. I'm almost 40 and rarely get carded these days.

I don't know how it works where you live, but in many jurisdictions around the world (including the one I live in), you have to provide ID to prove that you're of drinking age.

I don't know how this false equivalency keeps coming up on HN, but see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46983668.

Not sure what your point was, here in Australia they just look at it, they can't take a photocopy.

You have to show ID to buy beer?

If you aren't obviously adult then yeah. Where do you live so there are no laws on selling the alcohol to children?

There are laws, but in many countries they are not strictly enforced. In Japan, buying beer in the self checkout lane will just give you an “are you over 20?” prompt, no verification: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227987

Interesting, thank you!

Store doesn't get to photograph your ID, share it with 548 of their advertising partners, and leak it to 7 different hacker groups.

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.

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