Mastodawn

RE: https://toot.cafe/@soapdog/116290204253136215

“So it failed age verification and locked me out of many features. Bear in mind, I am 45 years old. I have an Apple account for 25 years, the age of my personal account alone should already verify my age.

Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.

Age verification is a scam, but checking it with a credit card is even worse.”

@aral this is worse than Discord banning my friend in her late 30s for saying “I’m 12 and what is this” and deleting her account with zero recourse.

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK 1d ago

@aral there is *already* a working age-verification scheme for UK, I use it to get vape juice delivered and the company has never asked for any other info than my address (OK you have to hand this over but if you're having physical products delivered you would have to do that anyway)

@aral am fumming here

Aral Balkan 1d ago

@soapdog Rightly so.

Aral Balkan 1d ago

@soapdog PS. Have you heard of this phone? (Sadly they’re US-based)

https://furilabs.com/

FuriPhone FLX1s Linux Phone

FuriPhone FLX1s Linux Phone

SoapDog 23h ago

@aral I saw here today that the company doesn't seem to be a good FOSS player and been toxic to their contributors. Before today, I was totally unaware of them.

I don't think I could run a Linux phone as a primary device cause I need government and banking apps that are only available to iOS or Android.

Aral Balkan 23h ago

@soapdog The thing that had warmed me to them (before finding out about the toxic culture) was that it does allow you to run Android apps so you could, theoretically, run your bank app (depending on just how much of Google’s surveillance infrastructure it mandates to be present).

But, yes, my drawerful of unused Linux phones gathering dust acknowledges your point :)

SoapDog 23h ago

@aral I remember doing something similar with Palm Pre 2 and HP Pre 3 running webOS. The Android runner worked half the time.

I am not sure we'll ever trully be able to run that stuff outside iOS or Android unless some legislation is put in place to foster it.

Aral Balkan 23h ago

@soapdog Which we really should be pushing for.

It’s ridiculous that access to modern life effectively requires paying a toll to one of two trillion-dollar US corporations.

SoapDog 22h ago

@aral I agree wholeheartedly

@aral I agree that it shouldn't be the only option, but I like when companies offer it as an option if they have to do this at all. I don't want to hand out my passport information, but a credit card I can just generate virtually anyway is fine.

LukefromDC 1d ago

@aral Ageless Linux is now out wirh scripts to strip out incoming age verificarion support from many Linux distros. For now they set the new age field in systemd's userdb to the epoch which is 1/1/1970 or to null when used in flagrant mode.

They are also setting up a full Debian based Linux distro, which will be Debian with any age verification that gets added stripped out.

Then for phones there's Graphene, which is publicly refusing to comply.

Presumably age-verification demanding sites will break in the future but I'd just as soon block them at the firewall anyway.

https://agelesslinux.org/

Ageless Linux — Software for Humans of Indeterminate Age

GrapheneOS 1d ago

@aral The laws being proposed and passed requiring providing age brackets to apps and websites are a horrific invasion of privacy for minors putting their safety at risk. It not only enables targeting minors in harmful ways particularly for the lowest age brackets but also leaks their birth date to apps and websites on the day they move into the next age bracket. One of the biggest lobbyists for these OS level age verification laws is Meta which just lost a court case for exploiting minors.

GrapheneOS 1d ago

@aral These laws dictating the information can only be used for gating access based on age is beyond ridiculous. There's no doubt they're aware it's going to be heavily used beyond the permitted use. It cannot be excused as naivety. These same governments often treat birth dates as highly sensitive information usable as a core part of authenticating people's identity. Meanwhile, they're passing laws forcing operating systems and browsers to leak the birth dates of minors to apps and websites.

𐁂𐀑𐀐𐁐 1d ago

@GrapheneOS @aral Meta is the primary driver of this among private sector companies. Their entire business model is showing ads to people, knowing exactly who they are. This is 1000% a blatant attempt to pierce pseudonymity online.

@Emerson61 @GrapheneOS @aral

Agreed that this is entirely about stripping online pseudonymity and age verification is just step one to acclimatizing people to having even more of their privacy stripped from them.

Uriel Fanelli 1d ago

@GrapheneOS @aral census is a specific function of the government. We can criticise govt because there is no state API to certify age. But, the fact census is a govt function, since 2500 years on, is out of discussion.

Aral Balkan 1d ago

@uriel @GrapheneOS Nothing is “out of discussion”. And without census data, Hitler couldn’t have found and murdered as many Jews during the Holocaust. So, no, something being done for a long time doesn’t make it sacrosanct or immutable. If that had been the case we’d still be practicing human sacrifice.

Uriel Fanelli 1d ago

@aral @GrapheneOS

those are the most stupid argument I ever heard. So much ignorance to debug.

Nothing is “out of discussion”.

Some things are, and usually they are teach in places we call "schools". If you had jump on a school bus in the past, at least once, you would know.

And without census data, Hitler couldn’t have found and murdered as many Jews during the Holocaust.

Idiotic and flawed argument. I could say "without oxygen on hearth, Hitler could not kill jews". The argument is idiotic and ignorant, and logically inconsistent: I could also tell: without jews, Hitler could not have killed jews.

So far, no meaningful argument found here.

So, no, something being done for a long time doesn’t make it sacrosanct or immutable.

We call it "tested for 2500 years" . This means is pretty stable, non defective, and worth. Call me back when your solution to this issue , whatever it is , is capable to work showing no big issue for, say, 5 years.

If that had been the case we’d still be practicing human sacrifice.

This is not the reason you should stop breathing, IMHO. Why to keep this Jurassic habit ongoing?

You sound as stupid as an American Trumpie.

Aral Balkan 1d ago

@uriel @GrapheneOS Whereas your verbal diarrhoea clearly Einstein level.

Do fuck off.

Joe | 🇵🇸 | 🧑‍💻22h ago

@uriel It depends on:

1. Which gov are we talking about? A gov that always practices justice and respects the constitution or a gov that's unjust and does not respect the constitution?

The govs we've seen are untrustable. So the answer is obvious: No justice, no constitution respect.

2. (Assuming the answer to the first question is "justice and constitution respect") Can the gov keep people's private data safe forever from malefactor?

The answer is always: No

Therefore, you're wrong

Period

Uriel Fanelli 22h ago

Which gov are we talking about? A gov that always practices justice and respects the constitution or a gov that's unjust and does not respect the constitution?

Is not up to you to determine wether the govt respects the constitution, there is a dedicated court doing this.

The govs we've seen are untrustable. So the answer is obvious: No justice, no constitution respect.

this is no fact, is just your opinion.

(Assuming the answer to the first question is "justice and constitution respect") Can the gov keep people's private data safe forever from malefactor?

My government has tons of data of me. None of them have leak so far.

Therefore, you're wrong

Show your arguments, the pathetic whining I read is not an argument. Is just a little mama prince screaming "nothing is good enough for me".

Period.

Your sister.

Henning 11h ago

@GrapheneOS
@aral

Good point! Using a birthday as any form of authentication is horrifying. So many services request a correct one for mundane things like gym memberships (yes you, #Crunchfit).

@aral a famous story here
https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

And Google is also great even if the police has no evidence
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11133805/Google-AI-flags-dad-photos-childs-groin-infection-phone-share-doctors.html

20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple …

Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison

@aral
I had no trouble with my banking app when I switched to Murena recently, but YMMV. There is a thread in the Murena forums about which apps work fully or partly.

https://community.e.foundation/t/list-banking-apps-on-e-os/33091

[LIST] Banking Apps on /e/OS

This is an editable list of banking apps that work on /e/OS. Please enter details only after you have tested all features of the application. If some functionality is not working mention that in the comments. Looking for contactless payment? See this article. TLDR: Curve app for customers, Zettle app for merchants. Country Bank App Name Status Comment WorldWide Revolut Revolut Works only with pre-installed /e/OS and locked bootloader Confirmed working on Murena Fairphone 6 with prein...

/e/OS community

DebC (She/Her)♿️☮️1d ago

@aral More food for thought as I look to buy my next laptop....sigh🤦🏻‍♀️

RealGene ☣️1d ago

@aral
Apple can use a credit card to perform a credit pull; that can tell them, or let them infer, the age of the account and/or its owner.

It's not a government-issued ID, but it's effective.

@aral Apple's only doing this as an excuse to force everyone to add a credit card to their account so they can run up more revenue through "accidental" purchases...

Shameless

Peet Tetteroo 1d ago

@aral digital sovereignty.. Linux..

Iron Bug 1d ago

@aral >I have an Apple account for 25 years, the age of my personal account alone should already verify my age.
also thought about this point recently. sometimes user has account for 20+ years and they demand "age verifiction".

I don't use Apple devices, but the scam with age verification spreads like cancer and as a system programmer I see the total madness of idea that "operating system should support age verification". this is the sickest proposal I've ever met in my whole long career in programming.
and credit cards are not just credit cards. it must be a credit card accepted by USA banks. and the past years all credit cards I have just cannot be used for payments in USA. this is not my fault. so this is a much worse method sometimes than just a credit score.

I must add that free software does not have all these problems. so I used to use FOSS for decades.

@aral Be agentive and ditch this shit. Use something else or better still, ditch mobile entirely.

Aral Balkan 23h ago

@shwell Telling people to forego the basic conveniences of modern life (like being able to pay for things and pay your bills, etc.) isn’t going to work. It’ll work for the 1% who care/have the technical knowledge/time.

The rest need proper alternatives.

(And a huge part of this, at this point, is legislation that breaks the monopolistic stranglehold two trillion-dollar US corporations have on mobile payments, banking apps, etc.