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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."
. . . 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.
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Well when I was 15(in 1996) I was able to get a debit card that could be used for 'adult' verification. Doesn't seem like a very good system to me.
Besides the "problem" of pedophiles in "chat rooms" being completely overblown, this is probably just the precursor of some sort of infrastructure to eliminate anonymous browsing. And who wouldn't like a piece of selling a token for $20/year to anyone who wants to get any information from the Internet in 10 years?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Excellent! I figure by about noon tomorrow I'll download a patch that "officially" makes me a 16 year old girl.
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?
~~~
So, not only are students going to be forced to carry yet another form of ID, but they'll also have to give a third-party company (Verisign in this case) detailed personal information.
What about student's rights - they have the right to enter chat rooms, etc.
I can envision the next step - restricting web sites based upon age, then it will be restricting web pages based upon being a student, finally, just restricting overall.
Luckily, we won't have to worry about this being a wide-spread problem - the system is too flawed to go very far; however, I feel for those that WILL be made to use it.
Bottom line is that NOBODY should HAVE to use this system - somehow it should infringe upon their right to freedom of assembly. Albeit, a *virtual* assembly, it's an assembly!
And what kid wouldn't trade there cheap token for a chat room that they see as stupid to some grimy adult for something else?
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
Yeah, because we all know that none of the pedophiles out there have kids of their own who might leave this key plugged in, or laying on the desk for dad/mom to use?
This is dumb, this does about as much good as the pages before porn sites telling people to not enter if they are not 18. Big deal, a USB key that tells someone I am young. It'll be 2 days maximum until some geek gets ahold of one and then you can buy them online for $25 +S/H.
see their site... they are the makers of the device
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
I agree it's a dumb idea--but I think it's really a segue into some companies requiring these tokens for everyone who wants to do business with them. The Federal government, for example, has been trying to figure out for years a practial way to give each citizen a public key to be able to, for example, apply for Social Security benefits or file a FEMA claim online. But since the easiest place to put a public key, a National ID card, spawns (rightfully) mention of the Book of Revelation happens every time it's mentioned, USB keys could be an alternative.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I recon a pedophile would be able to buy a token off a kid of a small ammount of money, if you were 12 and someone offered you 200 bucks for a silly bit of plastic someone gave you... I think there would be many takers.
The problem with all these ID shemes is aways tying the token to the right person until computers have mandated biometic id readers this is never going to work with remote computers.
Personally I think the best solution if for parents to take an interest in what their children are up to rather than seeing the internet as a why to keep them quiet. Someone will aways slip though the net, the best way for children to be kept safe is education, they need to know people lie, cheat, steal, and there are bad people in the world who would not think twice about killing someone else.
James
Well, I can't get a credit card at all (20 years old) due to bad credit.
Not a very good system.
^^
And now they are giving these things to much younger kids. Its a good way of giving allowance to kids without giving them cash that the bigger kids can steal -- or if they loose it, it can be canceled and the money protected....err...in theory because debits don't carry the same protection credit cards do, but most banks will try to give you close to the same.
Beyond that, when I run a credit card, my business doesn't get to know if its a debit card or not. When I'm on the road, I use my business's debit card that doesn't look anything like the cheesy consumer debits that go out of their way to let the person swiping it know its not a real credit card regardless of the visa logo. For instance, while in North Carolina a few weeks ago, I handed over my personal debit card to rent a car -- rejected. I then give then the business one, accepted -- same bank -- same type of card -- different look.
I'm convinced that the card companies don't tell anyone if its debit or credit and they have just compiled lists of acceptable CC Prefixes.
So no, having a credit card these days means nothing because of as the parent indicated -- debit cards are everywhere and anyone can get them.
is to adults. You can't prove you are an adult and thus entitled to something more by NOT having one of these.
The goal to Verisign is obvious -- once they are widespread, you try to get first libraries and then other places to require the use of the "KEY" to use the system to prove your age. As an adult, you'd "need" one, and thus have to pay for it.
Also, its a good first step toward a "universal" (as if) public key. Ideally, imagine something like the Post Office being able to assign a public/private key to you. That's what everyone wanted with these keychain java keyring things talked about in the 90's.
Personally, I hate seeing verisign being given this contract, but I'm not sure someone shouldn't have it.
I'd like to see a U.N. sponsored standard, with countries and or businesses able to register as registrars. The SSL key distribution system we have now works pretty well (if overly expensive).
At a minimum, that same system applied to people as apposed to web server names would go a long way.
Yes, I know all the usual issues apply -- how do you prove its YOU with the key, etc. Lots of discussion on that (which is off topic) and other things. Privacy? What about additional private certificate keys? Well, why not all those things.
Personal ID should have a data component for public key.
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Thank you for verifying your age. You are indeed a teenager as you claim.
-Verisign
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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.
This is NOT a step in protecting anything.
1) For a child to be protected, they MUST have the fob.
2) They must use it on presribed machines with the right software.
3) Some big brother is watching out for them.
What this really is a step to personally "brand" everyone. Just like RFID in clothes or under the skin or the tatoos of Germany.
Further you can only be "safe", if you are willing to "pay" for it, including tracking every one of your habits on net.
It's not the school administrators information to give away. This information must go through the parent.
Besides the "problem" of pedophiles in "chat rooms" being completely overblown
You're right. Most pedophiles attack children they know: their own, their family's children or their neighours.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
I think they're called "Parents."
The theory is that it'll keep the pedophiles, who won't have the "I'm a kid" token, out of the elementary school "chat rooms."
it will take exactly 3 seconds for these toatart appearing on the black market and sold to those sicko's.
as for the "pedophile problem in chat rooms" being overblown... My daughter hang's on a couple of websites/chatrooms that are pure kid, and LITTLE kid related. while sitting there with her i nthe chat forum a sick-asshat that was asking her age, started asking her if she knew what a blow-job was, and asking other questions that made it obvious he was an adult.
This is on the fricking NeoPets website. a site geared for little kids about a little kids toy.
sorry, it is a big problem and most parents do not monitor their child's net access closely which makes it an even BIGGER problem.
when I have to explain to her that posing a photo of herself on the net for her friends to see is a really bad idea, things are certianly not "overblown".
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Also, what about people that don't feel comfortable giving out their credit card information for age verification purposes? I don't want my credit card information all over the web.
Exactly.
Freedom has a price. The freedom to travel freely, however you want to, means that a few thousand people a year will die in car accidents. The freedom to speak your mind means that somewhere, sometime, some folks are going to abuse that freedom and incite a riot during which people die. The freedom to keep and bear arms means that some people will be wrongfully shot.
You can't have the good without the bad.
So, yeah, it's not exactly no big deal that only a few dozen kids get hurt a year, but that's certainly nowhere near enough justification to sanction any mechanism that may be even a precursor (as has been pointed out in other postings) to restraining the electronic means of exercising our right to freedom of speech and association.
"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."
Actually, while that is good for your credit, paying it off slower (not in full) looks much better. You're paying the bill (good) but you're also making the lender more money (better), so your credit score goes up further than if you pay the whole thing at once.
Same as a bank loan. It looks better to pay it off according to the schedule than to jump the gun and pay the whole thing off early.
Of course, if your credit is already excellent, there's no need to worry with all that. If you're trying to rebuild bad credit, then slower is better.
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