I hate to be cynical but I worry that this isn't going to matter, because it really seems that a lot of the pressure behind age verification isn't actually very interested in the age verification part...
All current age verification measures open up a torrent of attack vectors on user PII and privacy. Limiting the number of entities that are able to access data is one of the best ways to prevent it's leak or abuse. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
But therein lies the fundamental problem with surveillance capitalism. Until the sale of personal data/metadata is outlawed, the practice of targeting content based on an individuals personal data/metadata is outlawed, there is a highly punitive cost for violations and leaks that make storage outside core business functionality a major criminal and financial risk, and the compilation of this data by "intelligence" agencies it treated as a critical attack vector to national security – the attack on each citizens civil rights that it truly is – most privacy laws and regulations are just virtue signals designed specifically avoid the root causes, and further entrench the power of monopolies and incumbents.
FYI I don't believe Google sells user data. They sell products which leverage user data to give them a critical advantage over every competitor who does not have trackers in everyones pockets/computers, does not store their entire web search/browsing history, etc. It's in the interest of big tech to protect their market advantage (like ZKP, which would prevent competitors from having a new gov-mandated vector to compile user data).
Parents should at least be able to overwrite the age of their child, maybe selectively allow bypasses. My experience with a computer would have been completely different if I was blocked from half of the internet. Especially when I see which kind of content gets blocked.
I get that ZK techniques work, and reveal "nothing". That's useful.
But if they reveal nothing, isn't it wide open for abuse? Couldn't one over-18-person's proof become everyone's proof, because they can't tell it's the same proof, and the issuer can't tell where or how often the proof is being used? Or are there ways to construct data leaks that are not user-identifying but are abuse-identifying (and what would that even mean)?
Yep!
This is why the concept of zero knowledge age gating is such a trap for technically minded people. They imagine receiving a private cryptographic object that can be used to anonymously confirm that the government says it was issued to someone over 18.
That’s completely useless because a single leaked token could be used forever, so nobody actually considers this.
All of the real proposals have various compromises baked in. Some people want to require device attestation, so you could only do this handshake from a government approved device running a government approved operating system. Forget using Linux or maybe even a general purpose computer at all.
Other proposals involve online government handshakes in various ways, with a pinky promise that the government won’t keep logs or tap it for national security purposes. So we get back to anonymous by trust only.
watersb•1h ago
dboreham•1h ago
consumer451•1h ago
> Today, we open sourced our Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) libraries, fulfilling a promise and building on our partnership with Sparkasse to support EU age assurance.
protocolture•1h ago
Done.
Avicebron•53m ago
matheusmoreira•23m ago
Done.