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Verisign Develops Token for Age Verification
FirstTimeCaller writes "A Reuters article is reporting that Verisign in conjunction with an unnamed children's safety group, will release a USB token that can be plugged into a PC to verify the age and gender of a person participating in online chat rooms. According to the article, the token will be available free to students in a handful of schools this fall. School administrators will provide a list of students, with their ages and genders, and VeriSign will encode that information onto the tokens."
In most countries, credit card authentication was used to ensure one had reached the legal age...
In which situations wasn't it enough, besides the goatse ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
. . . why is there a "list of students" involved? And seriously, do they not know these tokens are lent? Either this is an insidious attempt at a pilot of some sort of "internet ID" or a completely dumb idea.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Who's going to run the betting pool on how many minutes it takes someone to crack the keys and modify the information?
Better yet, how many kids will lose their tokens?
Not to mention the possibility of the breaching of the privacy of minors.
On paper this sounds like a good way to protect children, but somehow I think the execution of the idea is not going to be as easy as Verisign and Co. think it might be.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Just check the online ID before persuing the child??
That's gonna cut into the FBI's stake-outs, isn't it?
And what is stopping a dubious individual from borrowing one of these tokens?
Selling his or her token to some freak on ebay!
terpmotors.com
A personal x509.3 certificate and a crypto key.
So when he's 21 he won't complain when the barcode on his forearm will be used to 'strenghten e-vote security'.
Train them while they are still young, the older they get, the harder for you to teach them new tricks...
Oh, wait, this only works with pkcs#11-enabled chat applications? I guess IRC will have to be outlawed then. You don't want untagged pedophile commies subverting little Tommy on IRC now, do you?
Unless the article is leaving out some, dare I say key piece of information... in about a week, students will have figured out that the computer doesn't know whether the USB token belongs to the person who inserts it or not.
In about two weeks, they will be borrowing them from older siblings.
In about three weeks, there will be a brisk trade in USB tokens issued to older students who have no interest in the school-approved content that is actually linked to the key, but great interest in money.
In about three months, forged adult-ID USB token will be for sale on eBay.
Even a plain old ID card has a signature and a photo on it, so someone can see whether it matches the holder of the card or not. But these anonymous bits of colored plastic are just an invitation to abuse.
In a corporate setting, I suppose you've signed something that says you're responsible for all use made of the token, and you would be suspiciously unable to do your job if you loaned it to someone else... and subject to dismissal if someone finds out. I don't see how that can be applied in a school context.
Unless they were planning to Superglue the token to the kid?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I guess FBI agents can get tokens for any age/gender they want.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Clearly in some cases it might be necessary or desirable to prove your age, but unless the chatroom is supposed to be an online matchmaking service I fail to see what the presence of a Y chromosome has to do with anything.
Once someone figures out how to crack it, he or she would be able to fool everyone who believes that the system is reliable.
Today most people are sceptical to people online, with this system it could actually get really easy for the scumbags to convince someone of their (fake) age.
As a technology concious teenager, I would like to say FUCK OFF VERISIGN. I WILL NOT BE PLUGGING SOMETHING INTO MY OWN HARDWARE JUST TO LET PEOPLE KNOW WHO I REALLY AM. If I want to disclose my identity in full, thats my own decision.
Of course, they're are a whole lot of teens out there who spend the whole night talking to friends on MSN (blame Micro$haft for capturing this market by bundling it with WinXP).
I would like to call on parents reading this to frag all traces of MSN and other chat networks from their teens computers so the quality of english spoken worldwide does not decline within the next decade. I stopped wasting my time talking to losers on such chat networks because I simply can't bear the quality of english OR SHOULD I SAY SMSlish being driven around by people who think 500 millisecond responses are critical. Spoken to your kids english teacher recently? Doesn't come as a suprise to me that I am one of the only students in the english class that can maintain good spelling with no cutbacks to save time.
Also think what else such USB Keys could do. Enable sitefinder instead of Google? Spy on students in cases where X person is under agreement to lease equipment from the school? Erase traces of non-DRM music to keep their friends at the **AA happy? Hmm, better speed up development of my RFID disk wipe module ASAP. I think I'll need it when school IT staff think they can blackmail me into violating californian breakin disclosure law again. They've already tried to break into my own blog to see what dirt I have marked private on them.
We're not looking for flawless. It just seems that this system is completely broken.
It's really not better than nothing at all. The illusion of safety can be more dangerous than being wary of threat.
It's not the school administrators information to give away. This information must go through the parent.
I think they're called "Parents."
Verisign announced today that it would begin a program to create the youngest group of hackers ever.
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Who says Verisign even thinks it's possible?
Verisign doesn't care. They just need to convince people that these USB keys somehow protect their children. It doesn't matter if it ACTUALLY works, just that people BELEIVE that it works. In fact, it's probably better for verisign if it doesn't work, as it's less work for them.
The goal isn't to protect children, the goal is to get $20/year from every kid who accesses the internet. Neat trick.
paintball
Advantage of credit cards is that a) you can exceed your available money (although I don't reccomend this, as the interest rates approach loan shark proportions) b) Because there's an extra buffer between you and your bank accounts, there's a fair amount of theft protection built in. You're only liable for $X of a stolen credit card, usually about $50, assuming you report it promptly. Debit cards, well, you may have a bit more trouble getting the money back from your bank. c) Using a credit card improves your credit rating. This is why I pay for everything by credit card, then pay off my bill in full every billing cycle. As a result, I've built a solid record as someone who makes use of credit and is also reliable. *shrug* It can make a big difference when it comes time for you to purchase your first car or house.
At the end of the day, I tend to carry my Discover card for credit (cash back is miniscule, but better than nothing) and a check card marked with a Visa logo for places that don't take Discover and for ATMs. ^_^ And I carry another credit card, a MasterCard, which I use if I run into places that don't carry Visa or Discover. I used to also keep an American Express card, but it seemed to be overkill. (Plus there's some political issues there, but that's another matter entirely)
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"non-negative" means >=0