AgeLock is Privacy Lock: Don't Use It

I never cease to marvel at the moral and even practical blindness of Morally Blind's author, Benjamin Sycophanske. So eager is he to suck up to FIC, big business, whatever he thinks the Hot Girls and Kool Kids are, that he never applies a scintilla of criticism to their press releases. One thing we can count on from Benjie: he refuses ever to think of civil rights and political liberties. They simply don't enter into his calculus -- ever. Trained as an IT guy and a corporate attorney, he simply has ZERO interest in these matters, although to graduate from law school and even to practice as an IT guy and attorney he would have had to have had some exposure to the concept of rights. Probably it didn't stick.

His latest gushing excess is of a new ugly and vicious system called AGELOCK. I'm not surprised that this awful new invention on the SL landscape comes from Allana Dion and Jamie David, as we know from long, long exposure to their manipulations, power-plays, and shenanigans on the old official LL forums, Second Citizen, and on this blog, that they are hugely aggressive and persistent. And that's not surprising: Allana is a BDSM queen. She may even be a "submissive" -- but as everyone knows, the submissives can often be the most aggressive and vicious with the cult of BDSM and with all its force-based ideology.

It seems that Allana and her buds (alts?) and Jamie, and oldbie FIC regular (Allana is the alt of an earlier avatar of the FIC era, I'm told) have made a system for their land -- and yours if you get a copy from them for free in the beta -- that will query avatars arriving if they are adults AND if they are willing to view adult material AND as another add-on, whether they would like to leave their birthdate to match with their avatar name.

If somebody wants to do that on their club on their land, at one level, who cares? It's their business, and their customers' business. But spread across the grid, as a kind of Adult Ban-Link (and NOT a reverse banklink as Sycophanske imagines, but a worse form of Ban-Link) it's really quite evil. Why? Because it puts into the hands of one group of SL residents a set of data from their own land and everyone else using their system a list of all those who have agreed to view adult material in Second Life -- and all those who were bounced away from the system and refused to comply with the request to verify or didn't wish to view it. They may not opt to save this latter data about bouncees -- but it's within their scripted power to capture if they wish.

So a list of adult consumers with their avatar names and RL birthdates will be in the hands of one of the most aggressive and persistently nasty BDSM types in Second Life. Maybe the BDSM community won't care -- they like abuse, and maybe even this kind of RL abuse of their privacy. But as it spreads, and begins to be used by any club, or any rental, or anybody who just wants to be free from the plague of kids harassing and griefing you, it could become the device of choice, as it advertises being "better" than Integrity by not taking your RL name and drivers' license or Social Security number.

Hey, give me Integrity *any day of the week*. They are a real-life registered company with a business reputation and a bottom line to fulfill and a board of trustees. If I fear they've abused my trust in taking my info, I can protest -- with lawyers, by getting Congress involved, by getting the media on it. I can't do that with these anonymous avatars in Second Life!

Even Busybody Fugazi makes the excellent point that this system puts into the hands of individuals what no government has had in RL.

Everything comes down to trust with a system like this: and I simply do not trust Allana Dion and Jamie David and never will, no matter what protections or widgets they add to their system. That's because I've had a chance to observe particularly Allana's persistent and stubborn BDSM nastiness over the years, and I have no use for it.

What's particularly misleading and nasty about what they are doing with this product is exaggerating about the way in which the Second Life audience is really receiving it.

They claim so many people will refuse to cooperate with LL on age verification, yet will want to view adult material, that they will be vulnerable to action by LL -- an unnecessary scare tactic, and a false statement.

Most people who want to view adult content will do the following:

o comply with LL's plan and age verify -- they give a company something that the company *already has access to* and merely verify their age through a driver's license or SS#.

Why? Because they don't think like the handful of those cited by Allana, who imagine such information given to this company will somehow "end up in the hands of evil Bush and the CIA". It won't. Most Americans understand how ID works, and they aren't fearful of even a disliked and discredited Bush getting this particular information and even in the remote case that they do, doing anything practical with it that their lawyers couldn't take care of in a jiffy, along with the media, the ACLU, and Congress, should it come to that.

The only hook that law enforcement has to bother somebody about what they do online is if they prey on children. So a list of people who volunteered to prove they are adults and gave their real-life contact information isn't a very useful list to mine for predators. Of course, it may have them like any list, but it's not so likely.

o Ignore the request to flag adult activity as individuals. If they are cybering on one of the millions of individual parcels on LL's 14,000 servers, in their own homes, behind locked doors and tinted windows, they are simply practically safe from intrusion and policing. Sure, somebody can cam in and AR them. Sure, LL might sift through its gadzillion reports and warn them. So? Unlikely. The verification thing is really intended to clean up the highly visible clubs and sex palaces open to the public or with group membership.

Another question rightly asked is whether having undertaken the obligation to check for someone's status, their mere say-so, without presentation of a valid license or SS#, is something that truly works. I don't see that it does, and a teen who wanted in could lie about their age. I don't think you solve the problem of teens on the grid by adult verification. But what you do solve by GOOD adult verification with real-life tools -- not BDSM queen tools -- is that you get people who want to play adult games on SL to verify their identity matched to an avatar. That's a powerful deterrent to engaging in illicit behaviour with minors -- and that's the end of the deterrent spectrum that verification is meant to address, not the end involving keeping out minors, though that has some percentage of success, too.

Why is this like Ban-Link? Well, it spreads, and everyone with rentals, clubs, malls, etc. grabs it regardless of adult activity, or simply to make sure nothing every cramps their style if it is construed as adult, then they acquire a huge list of those cooperating with them -- and can easily comply a list of those not, from bounces or simply mining the People list against their own huge database.

There's always another danger to a system like this: the punitive Lindens, eager to have tools for fools and not policies for civilization may GOM this system, or recommend it, or copy enough features of it to incorporate it into the client. Lindens love blue permission pop-up menus, and nothing is to stop them from putting them in.

As I understand it, the Linden verification program has become stymied now over the problem of how to have a company that verifies ID but doesn't fall afoul of EU privacy laws. They also got all this Euro-hater anti-American static about Integrity, which like the VAT spat, is more of a display of ignorance and fear about how American systems work than any legitimate beef. So whether for technical or political reasons or legal reasons (Integrity may not be able to practically or legally offer services to verify foreigners without SS#, I just don't know), the system isn't in place yet, but as the prosecution for ageplay is more and more coming into being, through the UK government's threats during the Virtual Worlds convention in London last month, or through Channel 4 coverage or through US prosecutors taking a look, the demand for limitation of liability will be intense.

I think if you are concerned about such prosecution, you simply check off your land as adult-only. I've done that on an explicit adult hotel I run in Juanita and put up a sign in the advertising and on the premises that you must be 18 or over.

Am I going to lose half my customers to these little hotels off the beaten path when the Lindens' system kicks in and bans people from land checked "adult" if not verified? I simply don't care if that happens.

For those who *do* care, they have to look at the statistics from my poll, and do their *own* polling of customers -- you need not listen to the fearmongering of controlling BDSM types who want to tell you how to manage your land and scrape your tenants' private information.

Here's my latest poll from visitors to Ross:

Do you plan to submit to new verification required to visit explicit adult parcels in SL?

No, I don't wish to visit adult sites: 49
No, I don't trust verification companies: 110
No, I will do what I wish on my own land: 69
Yes, but I'm not happy with it: 51
Yes, it's not a big deal at all: 81

Thus 69 percent of these people polled will NOT behave as Allana imagines (BDSM roleplay remains a minority of customers). They will either ignore it, or they don't care about going to adult sites, even (yes, quite a few of those!) or they will verify, as they don't think it's a big deal, or they will do it, albeit reluctantly. 250 out of 360 people will not be Allana's potential customers -- and they won't be yours, either, if you put in this dumb data-scraper and annoyance merely out of fear that someone might nail you with some sort of prosecution.

I'll say this in advance, too: Allana and all her fanboyz and girlfriends and boyfriend Jamie and alts will be along any minute to protest, scream, argue stubbornly, carry on like a house-a-fire. And I'm uninterested in debating, responding, counter-arguing. This is non-negotiable. I do not use products that enable avatars I don't like, trust, or have any reason to do business with in Second Life to compile a list of my private information and my intention and attention data. It's just not on. It's astounding how many people make products mounted on third-party sites that DO do this sort of scraping and who have absolutely no scruples.

Comments

[Dalien Talbot]

FWIW, add me to your "No, I don't trust verification companies" list, not that I value much the BDSM stuff - except for the amusement value of looking at them :-)

But just in case, I was born on the 29th february of 1969. :)

[29-Feb-69?]

You've mentioned this same birthday on several blogs, Dalien, so I thought I'd point something out...

The first check is easy, no odd year can be a leap year. They are every 4 years and happen to also be the same years that they US has a presidential election and they also happen to be the same years that the Summer Olympics are scheduled.

You really would have a lot of trouble if your ID were in fact, 29-Feb-69. :-)

[Alex Nikolaides]

"But just in case, I was born on the 29th february of 1969."

Even if that date existed (which does not), you have celebrated only 6 birthdays so far. 6yo old children are *not* even allowed to be in the Teen Grid and certainly are not allowed to comment on something called AgeLock! :)

Seriously, this AgeLock thingy is even more frightening than the "Integrity" fiasco. In the case of the Integrity, we at least know (?) their history, their connections and their agenda and there are REAL people, names, addresses and phone numbers behind the company.

How on earth someone will agree to give any REAL life personal info to a SL AVATAR under the name Allana Dion who didn't even reveal any real life detail of her or her business on her "official", serious, intelligent... blah, blah... interview?

[Dalien Talbot]

29-Feb-69: bummer. :) yes, it was a weak attempt at humour and a light form of protest.

Of course I'd give the valid date. (validity as defined by the formal verification criteria - there is always a nonzero chance that 29th feb 69 is valid within the universe of a particular backend:)

But I'd rather reinvest in Ginko or WSE than giving out my RL info into a concentrated pool, which would hence become a target for the miscreants.

Alex: *bursts into tears and goes back to the pile of legos on the floor* :)

Indeed, this is my point. I've seen enough of srs bsnss in SL run by anonymouses. Anonymity (eh? is there such a thing anyway?) is good, and I like the ease with which one can setup a "business" in SL. But I'd like to control the risk. And when the bird is out of the cage, it's impossible to catch.

[Allana Dion]

I'm not sure where you get the "power play on forums" bit about Jamie, he very rarely ever posts on forums, forums are my addiction.

No prokofy, no one told you I was an alt, you told me I was an alt and you have been the only person I'm aware of to ever say it, right here on your own blog in fact. I've asked you before to please say who you think I am the alt of, but so far you haven't been willing to say.

>"But spread across the grid, as a kind of Adult Ban-Link (and NOT a reverse banklink as Sycophanske imagines, but a worse form of Ban-Link) it's really quite evil."

It's not a ban link, it does not have the ability to ban anyone.

>"So a list of adult consumers with their avatar names and RL birthdates will be in the hands of one of the most aggressive and persistently nasty BDSM types in Second Life."

Our privacy policy very clearly states that no information will ever be shared or used in any way. Has Integrity given you the same promise? In fact they've stated the very opposite in thier own advertising.

See this link: http://www.gridgrind.com/?p=210 .. and watch the first two videos. The first video is a commercial for Aristotle in which they advertise their ability to provide Identity verification and political mailing lists in the same commercial. The second video is one in which John Phillips Aristotle in introducing himself to a discussion panel actually makes the statement that not only is he there to talk about Identity verification but he also can sell voter mailing lists and says if anyone is "running for office, come see me."

By the way, the discussion panel was one in which he was trying to sell the idea of making Identity verification on social networking sites mandatory by law, in effect setting him up for a whole lot of future business.

>"But what you do solve by GOOD adult verification with real-life tools -- not BDSM queen tools -- is that you get people who want to play adult games on SL to verify their identity matched to an avatar."

There have been reports of several people who have become "verified" through Integrity by giving false and even incomplete information. It isn't possible to truly "verify" anyone's identity without knocking on their door.

Our system doesn't verify anything and won't claim to. All we do is ask each visitor to make a clear statement that they have received the warning and are claiming to be of legal age to view adult content. It does not anywhere indicate what type of adult content and it removes the avatar's ability to later claim innocence and/or ignorance.

>"and can easily comply a list of those not, from bounces or simply mining the People list against their own huge database."

Again, we have promised, in writing on our site which can easily be recorded by a screen shot or by google cache, that we do not mine this information, it is never sold or used. It is merely stored so that people will only need to receive the warning once and won't be bombarded with it everywhere they go.

Alex: "How on earth someone will agree to give any REAL life personal info to a SL AVATAR under the name Allana Dion who didn't even reveal any real life detail of her or her business on her "official", serious, intelligent... blah, blah... interview?"

We don't ask people to reveal any real life information beyond their birthdate and we do not check anything. We do not ask for anything that is not safe to reveal.

While there are many people and business associates in Second Life who do know my real life name, address, phone number, etc, no I would not post that information on a website interview or anywhere else. That wouldn't be wise.

But we are not anonymous and anyone who needed to have our information is welcome to it. We do however have the right to protect ourselves, as does everyone else. It simply isn't safe to give out valuable real life information online.

(on a side note, I will ask you politely again Prokofy to refrain from referring to me as a "bdsm queen", I certainly am not. My love life and my private relationship are not open for public discussion and have nothing to do with my professional life or any business or community ventures I may undertake. Thank you)

[Prokofy Neva]

Again, as I've pointed out many times in the past, Euro-haters and even some leftoid or uneducated Americans have a great deal of difficulty understand why it's a GOOD thing to have voters' lists for sale -- to make them, sell them, buy them. It's called "democracy". If you have a movement like moveon.org fighting Bush, if you have a local Democratic Party chapter trying to get people to come hear the candidate, you buy lists to do mailings. That's *fine*. People get these flyers in the mail, and often find them very useful. If they didn't, they'd fight this system, and in some states, they have. But most people either find the political mail useful to keep up with issues from various groups and parties, or they just throw it away with all the other postal spam. They don't go into convulsions about their privacy being violated because somebody sent them a letter with their name, instead of RESIDENT at their same address culled out of the open public phone book.

Anyway, I don't expect these nuances to sink in to those tribal-mentality types that imagine with surly conviction that everyone is out to get them, and would cede their freedom to the BDSM queen Allana, in the name of preserving it from some professional and neutral mailing list house. Whatever. People just aren't very sophisticated and do things for emotional and stupid reasons.

[Coyote Momiji]

Damnit, I thought I was the BDSM Queen, Prokofy. You're so fickle in your affections. :(

[Dalien Talbot]

@Prok: "it's a GOOD thing to have voters' lists for sale -- to make them, sell them, buy them. It's called "democracy". If you have a movement like moveon.org fighting Bush, if you have a local Democratic Party chapter trying to get people to come hear the candidate, you buy lists to do mailings." - now I think you contradict yourself.

Or it was some extremely subtle form of sarcasm.

Please clarify.

@Allana: don't take it seriously. This place is an intellectual BDSM roleplay site. Only one dom allowed - Prok. Take it as such, and the things get into perspective and are a lot of fun.

[Observer]

Information Agelock requests, stores, and links to your SL avatar:

Date of Birth

Information Integrity requests, stores, and links to your SL avatar:

Name
Date of Birth
Gender
Address/Location
Social Security Number
For non-US citizens, passport number

I think the difference between the two systems needs to be put in greater contrast. To claim that Agelock is asking for the same information as Integrity is incorrect.

[Prokofy Neva]

Nobody claimed that Observer, and you can't post here further without an SL name as is well known.

What I said -- and you can just scroll back and read it -- is that I'd rather trust Integrity, which is a competent, known, more or less transparent company with registration, and a reputation in the real world -- and therefore subject to real world controls if they are needed.

Your address and location is not grabbed by the verification process as it is now -- you are merely asked to put an age and your SS# last four numbers -- not the entire number. Like a bank or credit card often asks for verification.

I have no reason not to trust Integrity. Not a single compelling fact has been brought forward giving me any reason to be concerned about what they do with data that the government possesses, and to which they have access, anyway.

I'm far, far worried about an anonymous avatar, who won't even admit she had alts, who won't provide her real-life name or whereabouts, who will grab all my data and keep it on a website-related database. No thanks!

I see Dalien is another one of those people who can't grasp how the real-life political process works, as he has been sitting on the Internet too long. You wonder where the parents were, all this time.

[Allana Dion]

Everyone who knows me knows who all of my accounts are, they've never been hidden.
Allana Dion
Crazy Jewell
lana Birdbrain

Prokofy, as I've asked before, you claim I'm an alt of some FIC person, please tell me who it is. I could use the influence points.

My real life information is available and has been provided to those who have required it to do business with me, but no I don't post it on blogs and websites, that wouldn't be safe. You're someone I would expect to understand that certainly.

Again, for those who are actually reading and not over reacting ... we do not collect "all your data", only your avatar name and your birthdate, nothing of any value whatsoever.

[Allana Dion]

I'm still not clear on your thought processes.

It's ok for a company (Aristotle/Integrity) to require real, valuable, and usable identifying information and sell it to anyone who can pay for it (they acknowledge that they do this in their own statements) .... but it's not ok for us to ask for nothing more than an avatar name and a birthdate (info that has no value) with a written privacy policy guaranteeing it will never be used or sold in any way.

Not getting your logic, sorry.

[Prokofy Neva]

Allana, just as I predicated, you're ranting, raving, fuming, and denying -- and also prevaricating.

Nobody claimed you were taking "all your private data". Nowhere is that said in my article, or anyone's.

What's at issue is your UNTRUSTWORTHYINESS as anonymous avatars with bias and agendas in SL who are going to get your little paws on a list showing who is chosing to go to adult lots in Second Life. Sorry, but that's just too much power to hold in YOUR hands.

It has to be put in the hands of others more competent, trustworthy, and subject to oversight -- as you are NOT.

If you're going to run a site that holds everybody's data, you should put your real life name to build credibility. If you don't...you don't...

Your written policy is not worth the powder to blow it.

Again, I'm aware that you'll spout nonsense, even lies, and fuss and fume. I am not interested in "engaging" on this. I felt it was important to enable the public to be aware of your actions.

[Jamie David]

A human being should be able to control where information on them is held. Should be alerted to what is held, how and why.

Attorney Generals of the United States announced in a meeting that the number one rule of the internet is "Don't give out personal information".

After great thought on the issue we felt that asking for a Date of Birth with out having the persons Real Name was the safest alternative. A DOB and SL users name. The other option of having users type out a sentance like "I John Doe am over 18 and understand there there is adult related material inside." got too complex when languages were added. It was also felt to ask the same question 3 times was better. Less room for misunderstanding.

We don't want anything more than that. Don't want to know Real Name, address or SSN#. How do we know that it was not acquired through ill means? There is no way to prove that data entered was done so by the person. Furthermore there is no way of ensuring that the person using the system is the one who was verified.

There currently is no system in the world that works 100% even in theory. The criminal and underage will find a way to bypass. Nature of the beast. Until such time as there is a system that can assure that kids are safe 100% we need to do the best that we can at the same time as not creating further troubles. I personally believed that the current system of LindeLab registration was enough.

As to information for voting. It should be there for all to use. System as it is now looks after candidates that have money. That is not democratic. They are selling peoples personal data to anyone who will pay (Go to http://aristotle.com and see what you can buy, see what Wired think www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2003/12/61543). Reason people don't protest is they just don't know.

How many americans are aware of the latest bill passed in the Houses of Congress and Senate "HR 1955" "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007"?

How many SL users are totally unaware that Verification is on the books?

There is too much invasion of privacy done in the name of security. Mistakes happen. Systems get hacked, data is sold, merged, lost or just thrown in the trash. Also see http://breachalerts.trustedid.com/

The other point about Ban lines just doesn't relate to the system as it is. There is no way to "Ban" someone with AgeLock. It is not part of the system. To ban someone you have to use the LindenLab supplied land tools.

Adult flagged land however will have ban lines, Aristotle verified ban lines and they will come with a financial price of US$ .50+ per user. They also will come with a longer term price, storage and use of your personal data. If that falls into the wrong hands could cause you personal anguish. Google "Identity theft".

A great and happy day would be the day that LindeLab announces Verification is dead in the water and then there would be no need for Aristotle or AgeLock. WE felt there needed to be an alternative which in my humble opinion used simple common sense. SL user name and their DOB putting the user at the least possible risk yet still getting the point cross that they were entering an area with adult material.

Allana is correct in not giving out personal private information about her self. There is no control where that information might be further posted, or used against her. If there is a legal issue. LindenLab has her as well as my contact details and the courts can request it.

In closing I leave you with the words of Philip Linden.
“It is important to note that privacy, in general, is clearly a big part of SL.
We must consider what things we need to do to be safe and legal on our own servers.
And, more generally, that these types of verification systems are, in the longer term, things people will likely build on their own.
We certainly would never push people to disclose gender or age, beyond what is needed for legal compliance.”

I have yet to see a law that REQUIRES verification, requires handing over of Identity numbers. So please help us enlighten the residents and LindenLab that verification is not needed and doesn't work. Then you can put AgeLock out of business and sleep a little better.

I did miss one point you made that is very very important. No one knows us. You should not trust us. Don't trust anyone! I agree.

DO NOT TRUST THAT ANYONE IN SECONDLIFE IS WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE, UNLESS YOU LIVE WITH THEM.

There are far too many folk out there with the worst intentions on their minds. Costs are going up and money is getting short.

Lets say that I am a bad person, evil and rotten but looked nice and presentable. If I walked up to you on a street and asked you for your birthdate would that put you at risk?

With out your Real Name I think not. If it does please help me and show me how?

The thinking was to come up with a system that puts no one at risk.

[Prokofy Neva]

Jamie David's thinking is filled with the fallacies and evil inversions so typical of the Geek Religion these days, trying to undermine common sense and real-life democracy in order to put power into *their own hands*.

The first fallacy is this: "Let's get rid of democracy and mechanisms like voting lists you can buy, claim that it's only rich people who can buy them and that buying them is evil -- then we get to be in charge without restraint!"

See, it's all bullshit. Voting lists are not some evil, expensive, corrupt thing. They are normal, mailing lists. Even a modest non-profit can buy them. People could make them up practically without any list company using the phone book anyway. They buy them because compiling them, keeping them up to date, correcting them is work.

People in political parties and non-profits raise money. That's a good thing. That's how they get support for their work. If nobody supported them, if they had no backers or subscribers, they'd not be able to do even a simple thing like buy mailing lists.

Politicians aren't merely "bought by the richest people" -- that's a silly exaggeration. Oh, to be sure, rich people and corporations have their say. But they aren't the only ones. There are always *other* rich people on the other side -- look at George Soros and moveon.com or Clinton or Gore and their backers! Political advertising on TV is regulated, it costs money, parties raise money, they pay for the spots.

And you had...a better way? Which was...what? Just having a little technocratic committee with your friends the people who "are more relevant than others?" Who get to be in charge because...why? They win an anonymous popularity contest on Internet?! Please. This is insane. And nobody needs to buy this insane sort of reasoning and give up their freedoms to fucktards.

Wired's article from about 3 years ago is one article about one set of biased and cynical journalists. It's a good thing that there are biased and cynical journalists of all stripes. But...what have they done lately? Have they found this story to be true in any kind of widespread way? If this company responded to their concerns, let's say, and perhaps tightened up the ability of anonymous cynical fucktards -- much like yourselves -- to throw a system -- have they written about this?

Has anybody actually examined whether this very biased story in Wired, planted by merely one political faction in a dispute was true then, and is true now?

Is Wired and its politics something we *all* want to run the country? No.

Does an article about this company of some 3 years vintage by some dubious types who fake their names to try to jimmy a system convince us that this company, or any company with voting lists for sale is evil? No.

Is this company open for any party to buy mailing lists, which are essentially in the public domain? Yes.

Is there *still* a story here such as to justify not using this or some similar company as a verification service? No.

Was there some reason that this story would mean that a list of avatars from Second Life would in fact be sold as a voting list? Um, no. That would take some doing. If LL and this company make an agreement not to enable this data to be used for the public voting lists, there's no reason to suspect they will be evil, conniving fucks and put their reputation at stake (geeks imagine everybody is just like them).

In short -- this is all flaming paranoid insanity, of the sort I'm accused of all the time. There is absolutely no facts whatsoever brought forward that say that people verifying the identity the government knows anyway are sold off; and if somehow they *are* sold off, it's not as if they are dragged on to the public square and asked about their cybersex habits, or their ex-wife's divorce lawyer is able to impound this information.

There's simply no rational discussion here, and just a lot of crazy Internet memes by semi-educated and outrate stupid people.

Data is breached all the time. I can think of a really serious way it is breached: when avatars in a game with other anonymous avatars who are power-hungry stupid fucks vouchsafe information about their online cybersexing with their birthdate *and their IP address* to anonymous BDSM queens. Yikes. Yes, there are some serious breaches of privacy and security on the Internet!

One has to Laugh Out Loud that these amateurs imagine that data is hacked only out of some evil corporation's databases, and um...never out of their own.

The SL population doesn't know about verification? But they will, once the messages drop down, and once they attempt to access an adult lot that is flagged for verified only *shrugs*. Not rocket science, that.

Of course there's a way to ban someone with Age-Lock. The owners have lists, tied to IPs. They can make life miserable for all kinds of people they don't like, and spread their blacklists around. People who bounce from their system and refuse to then verify could in fact be traced and proclaimed as "black". These people aren't to be trusted.

Re: "Adult flagged land however will have ban lines, Aristotle verified ban lines and they will come with a financial price of US$ .50+ per user. They also will come with a longer term price, storage and use of your personal data. If that falls into the wrong hands could cause you personal anguish. Google "Identity theft"."

I'm not aware of any claim from Linden or Aristotle that each verification may cost 50 cents. If it does, great! Sounds like as workable system as anyone could devise.

I'm all for putting this task into the hands of a company that only focuses on this, as LL often does things badly when they put their hand to them. I'm also not interested in having anonymous avatars run this in SL : )

Let's ask ourselves, shall we? From which entity do my data have a chance of "falling into the wrong hands" (given that the government already knows where I live from my driver's license lol).

1. A U.S. firm that specializes in verification of age and the maintenance of publicly-available voting lists and sells mailing lists as a perfectly legal and legitimate activity, a company with a board of trustees, a known, listed CEO, a tax return, a business plan and independently-audited financial statements, to which legal action, media scrutiny, and Congressional oversight can be applied or...

2. A group of aggressive, amateur, and not very educated BDSM players in Second Life who track IPs, birthdates, avatar names, and sexual practices, who have the capacity also to make chatlogs on their properties and track purchases and proximity data.

So...we all have to give our:

o avatar name
o advertise our consent to view and participate in adult activity
o traffic patterns
o proximity data
o IP on a third-party site
o birthdate

Even if the BDSM gang decides not to bother to scrape, say, proximity information, or merely gets a yes or no to a blue menu inworld, without touching a third-party site, they still have way more private information about me and my travels and my age and my online sexual activities than in fact any government, corporation like Integrity has ever had in history. It's pretty awful stuff -- and fortunately even Busybody, who tends never to meet a technology he doesn't like, raises a red flag about this.

Philip Linden is hardly any source of authority on my civil rights and my privacy. That's fucking *absurd*. His notion that "someone will make it themselves* is part of his addle-brained tekkie bullshit that is pretty goddamn destructive. Says who? And which one? And how will oversight be maintained?

Nobody "hands over identity numbers" to Integrity. LL has a template that asks for the last 4 digits only of your SS# number as a marker. They don't keep your number themselves on file.

It doesn't matter to me if verification doesn't work 100 percent of the time. It doesn't matter to me if some script kiddy hacked into some Budweiser site. They can make a good-faith effort to get people who are consumers of adult material to make THEMSELVES responsible by registering, which is the greatest deterrent to abuse. It's not about keeping out kids. It's about making adults responsible.

Once we've reviewed all the half-baked, tendentious, and fallacious reasoning of the BDSMers, we have to conclude: we are not in safe hands with them; we don't *have* to access adult material anyway; and if we do wish to, while imperfect, there is a system that pretty much works and which we have no objective reason to believe will compromise us.

It's just very simple for me: trusting an enclave of aggressive and not very educated BDSM players in Second Life who hide behind anonymous avatars, or trust a company with known street address, CEO, phone number, and business reputation. It's not rocket science.

[Prokofy Neva]

BTW, even if they don't use their web site for verification -- as many services tied to SL do by combining a visit to a website with clicking on an inworld object -- they may still double back and harvest IP addresses in another way by starting a forums or attracting people to existing forums involved in this Agelock.

[Economic Mip]

There is another option, while not for everyone, stay away from all the sexual crap on the grid, and don't verify, or go to places covered under this Age Lock thing. Personally, I want to put the reverse on my land, "By entering this land you agree to not engage in adult content, or anything which may violate local laws (which here state adult content = 21), otherwise goodbye.

[Allana Dion]

Just for the record, to counter Prokofy's rantings, AgeLock records avatar name and the answers given to the blue pop up windows and ONLY sends that information to the database IF the individual chooses to answer the queries. It makes no records of any other information.

We can not track IPs.
We do not record chats.
We do not make note of locations.
we can not see what your actions are in world or what adult content you may choose to view.
Our system does not distinguish any difference between someone who is visiting a xxx club, or shopping for skins, or simply visiting a friend.
We do not make any record of individuals who choose to ignore the pop up requests.

Rather than take Prokofy's claims at face value, anyone is welcome to see the demo for themselves (a link is on my classifieds page on my profile) or read the website http://agelock.net/

This was something we developed for ourselves, for our own use, and felt there may be others who found it useful as well. IF the community indicates they do want it, great, we will continue to make it as useful and effective as possible and continue to listen to everyone's suggestions in how to do that.

Those suggestions are coming in and people are discussing this rationally in other places without name calling and personal insults. I'm sorry you're not able to do that Prokofy.

I look forward to continuing those discussions and I'll be abandoning this one now, as it is clearly not going to go anywhere but to more name calling and ranting.

[Prokofy Neva]

>We can not track IPs.

You do if they come to a forums, which might well be related to agelock, and like Ban-Link, eventually it may have to be handled on the third-party site because the database work will be too intensive for inside SL.

>We do not record chats.

How can we prove that? Everybody captures chat. SL enables the capture of chat. It's really a matter of trust -- of which we have...NONE.

>We do not make note of locations.

But...you do harvest the information and could at any time.

Thank you for your response.

There is no way for us to get IP information with in SL. I wish we as land owners could, it would make dealing with alts a lot easier. Ban an IP rather than a person.

We do not make the user go to an external website like some other systems will. So there is no way for us to get IP information. The informational card we hand out at the end of the process has a URL but we have no way of linking it to an entry. Users can see url is just agelock.net

As to logging all chat or location of users in proximity of the unit that is true as it is for any prim in SL that has script in it. Just as much as you have a log script on this web site that loggs our user names, email addresses, IP number and what we say. All should be careful these days what they post it will be there for eternity. I will afirm that all we collect is your SL Name and DOB, but I can not prove it. Any more than you could prove that you do not sell the names of your customers. Best rule is to believe the worst and guard against it.

Wired is an old article. It raises doubts. As does the Letter from the Attorney Generals.

My own personal experiences with Aristotle have never been successful. Anyone can get into the BudTV.com system with any name any address you make up. Never been fixed but still heralded as working.

According to the test of Aristotle system on SecondLife I really am Jamie David. I verified with false made up information. I informed both LL and Aristotle and neither seem to care.

I have asked for the name of any of the "Thousands of Company's" that use aristotle's Integrity system but it seems that there are none other than BudTV. If anyone can find an example of Aristotle system working I would be surely grateful.

"Nobody "hands over identity numbers" to Integrity. LL has a template that asks for the last 4 digits only of your SS# number as a marker. They don't keep your number themselves on file."

There is a screenshot of the SecondLife Verification form on gridgrind it asks in leu of SSN# FULL drivers license, passport number, National ID number. or Identity card.

Aristotle are not interested in your SSN# that they surely already have. They are more interested in your confirming it or adding it if they don't have it and most of all confirming that you are alive, using internet and accessing adult content.

It seems to me that you have a lot more faith in Companies than I do. You choose to believe that someone has looked after your interests for you. Sadly that is how many feel.

Many would believe that Aristotle is in this to protect children. Not one endorsement by any parent group, strange. They allow minors into an existing system (BudTV) and claim it is successful. Not Good. When one reports that one can access their system providing false data it is ignored. Lets look into the claims on their web site that I find hard to believe. 150+ countries handed over their populations ID information. Aristotle can verifiy someone from Cuba?

Just the placement of a sign I feel would not be enough. It can easily be missed in the slow rezing process.

Yes it is a solution to make all of SL PG. Would be a sad solution.

[Prokofy Neva]

Again, do you read? Everyone knows that unlike the cop shows, you can't just pick up someone's IP out of SL itself. *But you can if you have a forums*. And most services like this develop forums or websites sooner or later. Don't be fake naive and obdurate.

No one can be sure you will not institute the third-party site just as every single other service like this has had to do because of the volume of people to be served and the dbase activity which simply cannot function in SL alone.

As for chat-logging sorry, that's something people trust or don't trust, and I don't trust.

"here is a screenshot of the SecondLife Verification form on gridgrind it asks in leu of SSN# FULL drivers license, passport number, National ID number. or Identity card."

Grid Grind, the Second Life Citizen forums re-warmed, is hardly a source for me.

I've gone through the beta for the actual template they've put in, which they put in for Concierge level members, and all it required was the last 4 digits of your social. No full driver's license whatsoever. Perhaps the "national ID card" concept is for Europeans or Asians. And perhaps that won't work, which is why the project is dragging on -- perhaps they haven't figured out a way to efficiently verify, yet not require such disclosure of information. They are not impervious to concerns.

I frankly don't think I need to get this story from the Grid Grind -- I'd like to get it from the Lindens, who will actually be implementing it.

There have been COPIOUS LL blogs on how they keep some of this info, and throw it away, and Integrity is the other side of the puzzle, keeping some, not getting some, throwing it away. Read them. You are actually quite full of shit, as none of these things you are claiming have been stated by Linden Lab.

Aristotle can't confirm that I access adult content. They don't track me inworld. They don't eevn have my avatar name, as far as I know. All they undertake to confirm is that my real-life name given to the Lindens has a verifier to go with it like the last four numbers of the social, or possibly the driver's license or passport.

But they don't then take that half of the puzzle of verification, and then link it to the avatar name -- it is Linden Lab that does that -- taking the verified identity of the real-lief person, and checking off that the avatar claiming to be that person has verified their real-life name.

So from there, only Linden Lab knows what I do -- and of course, YOU do. And that of course is what's of concern. Aristotle could putatively conjecture that they have a list of names from their account Linden Lab that are verified because ostensibly they accessed adult content. But perhaps they verified for other reasons. They can't undertake to make a claim about it, and don't. Their job is merely to verify the real-life name matching with the identifiers.

I don't worry about someone looking after my interests. I look after them myself. And I see nothing wrong with verifying with a verification company that my SS number goes with my name, and then in turn having LL verify that that verified real-life name is the name matched to my avatar.

All of this can be clarified with LL, but I sure as hell would rather take my chances with the potential abuses by this company, about which nobody but a few lame Wired reporters have had anything to say in 3 years, than have to be recorded as accessing the BDSM queen's palaces. No thanks!

The budweiser system didn't "allow minors"; it was a system designed to filter them out. It wasn't 100 percent successful. No site will be. Kids are clear about lying about ages and using parents' ID. It doesn't faze me -- they make a good-faith attempt, they refine it. I don't see why that would be grounds for simply throwing up one's hands and doing nothign and not attempting to verify adult status.

I don't care if they can verify someone from Cuba, since the government there controls the Internet now anyway and people are watched and probably have difficulty accessing something like SL. Even if they manage, if they are children of the party elite or something, I wouldn't worry excessively about Aristotle's limitations for verifying only 150 countries, because there will be other back-ups and manual ways to do this verification.

Frankly, no one trying to sell a competition of Integrity/Aristotle and trying to thwart the Lindens should be heeded, as they are merely trying to hustle their product. Understood -- but no sale.

I don't worry about slow rezzing signs. It's not the norm. And frankly, drop-down blue screens are often batted away, or freeze on some systems.

[katykiwi song]

If the purpose of the consent is to protect against liability for exposure of adult content to a minor, then it should be mentioned that a minor is legally incompetent to consent.

Just as a minor's consent to have sex with an adult does not protect the adult from criminal responsibilty for a sex crime against the minor, the consent elicited with this system will not protect the actors legally even if the minor lies.

A minor can click away at the blue pop down menu, make up any birthdate, and no matter how many times he claims to be of age, it will carry no weight legally and do nothing to legally protect the adults who elicit the consent.

[ange Embuldeniya]

Prok, did anyone ever tell you that you're such a delight by providing hilarious free entertainment to the folks at Human Resources and the PR Office at Linden Lab :)

So how much has LL's PRO fed you with to come up with such a wonderfully-demented and baseless blog posting on AgeLock versus their integrity deal? :P

A controversial LL Drama Queen! :)

[Prokofy Neva]

um, I have no idea what the PR Office and Human Resources offices of Linden Lab is doing, and if they are laughing at me, I wouldn't be surprised, nor would I care.

I am not paid anything by LL, that's silly. Erm, I pay *them* tier?

I guess you're one of Allana's fans, but it's quite obvious that what she and her pals get out of this is a host of information about their fellow residents and their preferences in SL, and I'm not for putting such power in the hands of unaccountable residents, I'd prefer LL's even flawed scheme which is far more accountable.

If you don't take their word for their claim that they do not retain the information used to verify, and you feel your privacy is somehow endangered, then contact your lawyer and file a lawsuit or a FOIA if you imagine the government is secretly monitoring your online habits, or do whatever is appropriate to meet your needs, rather than snarking on a forums and taking potshots at writers who legitimately question the intentions of BDSM queens.