Age Verification Takes Some Hits

(Photo above: Tee-shirt designed by Mirah McGuire).

THE RECENT ANNOUNCEMENT by Linden Labs that Age Verification has come to Second Life has attracted outrage among residents.

While there are some SL'ers who believe they have nothing to hide and have no reservations with providing personal information to verify their age, location etc., others feel Age Verification will do nothing to prevent Under 18's from getting into Restricted areas.

Mirah McGuire, who says she has four children, stated there is nothing stopping kids from getting hold of their parent's credit cards, social security information etc., and "verifying" false information. She also feels it is Linden Lab's responsibility to prevent under age users from accessing areas in Second Life, not residents.

"Since minors are NOT ALLOWED on the adult grid, why do we have to guard against minors seeing 'restricted content'? It isn't OUR job to keep 'em out Linden Labs, it's yours. Why punish us? This is the most amazingly ass-backwards way of doing ANYTHING that I have ever heard of."

Another critic of the decision, Harald Nomad, a Second Lifer since 2003 said that Linden Lab had chosen the path of free, un-verified accounts and that made it their responsibility to deal with the consequences, not residents.

"Don't confuse verification with trustworthiness," he pointed out, "one has nothing to do with the other."

"The first who needs to earn our trust is Linden Lab itself. By taking its responsibilities seriously."

Mr. Nomad said his comments were not about 'Linden-bashing', but more about making sure that residents were heard on this issue.

"Many have warned Linden Lab when they first introduced the free access," he advised. "Based on the seven-day trial that was in use before then, residents had a pretty good idea what that would lead to."

"Linden Lab didn't want to hear, and now they get to deal with situations they were warned for. It's really nice that they can show off a nine million plus "user" base, but at what price?

"It's wrong to put this (Age Verification) on the shoulders of residents, rather than dealing with the issue where they originate - free accounts," continued Mr. Nomad. "A new one every 20 minutes if need be."

According to Mr. Nomad the way to go is separate ratings into PG, Mature and R-Rated with identity only being required to be proven on R-rated sims, rather than a blanket policy all over Second Life.

Another critic of the scheme, Agapanthus Voom, who has an adult sim exclaimed, "The whole thing is a bunch of bull crap... I will not be partipating... It's SL responsibility to keep teens off the grid... not the SL players... What a bunch of weasles!!!

Mr. Voom said he believed the real reason Linden Labs is taking these steps to "clean up" Second Life was to appeal to the huge Chinese market.

Earlier this year, Second Life finance reporter, Connie McMahon said the Age Verification issue had evoked eight-to-one negative responses when it was first mooted back in May.

At this time, and now in August, a lot of resident's concerns and objections relate to the submission of detailed personal information such as Social Security and Passport numbers to Integrity Services via the internet. Since 2005 there have been numerous high profile instances of supposedly highly secure US companies and government agencies losing detailed data on customer account and personal information.

The parent company of Integrity, the third-party responsible for the Age Verification process, is Aristotle International, a company which compiles and sells voter lists and demographic information to political parties, PACs, fund raising operations, etc.

The requirement of SSN and Date of Birth, while not unusual, is no longer industry best practice. Verification companies such as IDology and ChoicePoint have dispensed with the SSN requirement entirely in favor of logic routines that will assume, for example, that if you hold a mortgage, own a business or work in certain professions (Doctor, Attorney, etc) that you are over 18 years old. The focus of these organizations is simply to reliably establish whether an individual is an adult or a minor. Linden Lab refers to the program alternatively as "age" verification and "identity" verification. The blog in May stated that only "a match code" will be returned but they declined to respond to questions regarding exactly what the code would signify.

Robin Linden has been approached for comment and we hope to bring that to you shortly.

(This article was co-written with material supplied by Connie McMahon).