To be clear, I’m not advocating for online age verification. I’m very much against it in any form. I’m just curious from a technical standpoint if it’s possible somehow to construct an accurate age verification system that doesn’t compromise a user’s privacy? i.e., it doesn’t expose the person’s identity to anyone nor leaves behind a paper trail that can be traced to that person?
The problem is that it leaves a paper trail.
Grace also knows what number n got verified, and the identity of the user n. Later, the website can ask the age-verifying service who user n actually was. It requires that the age-verifying service cooperates with the website, though, but this could be mandated by law, which would create a single point of (privacy) failure.
PS: i love your writing style. It’s so simple and clear :)
Cryptography is a really complicated subject. You managed to express it very easily understandable.
Yeah, that is a problem.
And thanks for the compliment.