[master-lincoln]

The digital world is not like the real one. When you show your ID once all it's details are saved and can be searched across. When showing your ID to the cigarette vendor they will not notice most data and will have forgotten it a while later. So we need to be more careful with the data we give out digitally.

No ID is needed, just proof that you are above a certain age. There are technological solutions to just give out that data, but politicians seem to not want to go that way. This is the real issue, not age checking. The fear that age-checking means tracking...

[somenameforme]

Two things on this. The first is that at least in the EU they are actively pursuing reasonable technological solutions. [1] The second is that most of the 'usual suspects', the sites people are seeking to regulate, already require a phone number for an account. That enables tracking to a far greater due to a much larger traceable footprint than ID does, even if prevented directly. Even ID numbers are not particularly useful because most change whereas people usually try to keep the same phone number.

And on top of this those sites also have a tendency of demanding ID at their own whimsical and arbitrary discretion and often in even more invasive ways, like requiring a selfie of a person holding their ID along with a scanned, not even photographed, image of said id with all details clearly visible.

[1] - https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU...