Some children are drawing on fake moustaches to bypass online age checks | Hacker News Reader

Some children are drawing on fake moustaches to bypass online age checks

independent.co.uk

30 pointslatexr10 comments

I supported my kids circumventing arbitrary tech restrictions.

Son #3's highschool shut off 2.4GHz wifi for some reason. This was before 5Ghz was common (802.11a inc). He bridged 2 wifi adapters and made his laptop an open 2.4GHz Hotspot. I was so proud.

That's the start of the push for full identity validation as we all predicted.

Exactly, from the very start.

None of this would be needed if it were up to parents to only give their kids child-locked devices, and society backed up the parents on that by making it easy to turn on child locks, not selling unlocked devices to kids, etc.

Also, you should be able to block child-locked devices from reaching your website with a simple config setting that puts your website on a list, and not the same setting that causes Google to think you're a porn site.

Also, it doesn't have to work perfectly to change kid culture.

Source: https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/research/online-safety-a...

This is one of those news stories that when you read it you think it’s so ridiculous, on so many levels, that it can’t possibly be true. But then I look at the calendar and I’m reminded it’s 2026, which means it probably is true.

That a media push to make "it more secure" i.e. closer to Chinese Internet ID.

And this is why you need digitally attestable government IDs, and devices that run government-approved operating systems that can securely check these IDs in a tamper-resistant way. Anything else won't survive the "three kids in a trenchcoat" problem.

the government ids should be enough. Germany has an quite interesting system. Federal issued ids that contain an nfc powered chip that provides only information if the user has the credentials that allow access. The minimum is a datum stored/generated (name, age, fullfills age requirement, service pseudonym, ...) and the maximum is full access without pin requirement. After over an decade i haven't heard of hacks that broke the system. Effectivly it is possible to use it in an offline system that allows access to an venue for someone at least 16 years and all that the system sees is that the owner of the id is at least 16 years old

> And this is why you need digitally attestable government IDs, and devices that run government-approved operating systems

Yes. And government approved food, government approved entertainment, government approved births, government approved travel and government approved deaths.

Wait, we already have most of them. /s

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