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by takinola 898 days ago
> The fact that this absolutely will doxx your privacy to the government?

Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party.

Now, whether governments should have the right to restrict access to certain types of information and media based on age is a different question

2 comments

> Done properly this will not reveal your online behavior to the government any more than using your government issued ID card to enter a bar leaks your location to the issuing party.

This is incorrect, and a gross misunderstanding of how either network requests on the internet work, or crypto... likely both.

Are you really saying someone looking at an ID card is the same as my computer sending a request containing my ID to a government entity, and waiting for a response?

Here’s an idea for how it could work while preserving your privacy.

1. User verifies their age with a trusted party (which may or may not be a government body)

2. User requests a token from the trusted party. The token is signed so 3rd parties can verify it. The token also includes the public key of the user so 3rd parties can verify whom it is for

3. The user shares this token with the 3rd party site, who is now able to verify the user’s age. Note, the 3rd party site never has to contact the issuer of the token other than to get their public key.

With this model, the token issuer is not able to connect the user to the 3rd party site directly.

We can, of course, think about possible attacks but this is just a basic illustration of the possibilities.

>Done Property

Why would it ever be?

Either incompetency or Malevolence will make itself manifest.