I’m asking because I just had to verify my age thanks to YouTube requiring me to watch a video that was age restricted.
You have absolutely f*cked yourself over by doing that. It’s not a matter of if that ID you just gave them is going to get leaked, it’s a matter of when and by who. These ID verification companies are infamous for mishandling this kind of information and are huge easy targets for hackers.
I would highly recommend preparing for the worst now before it happens so when your ID does get compromised you already have things handled.
Do not give these companies your ID unless you really like the idea of someone POS using it to commit crimes on your behalf.
Focked?
Feked
Not for me it fucking hasn’t.
And won’t.
… I just had to verify my age …
No you did not. You chose to do so.
I have not used WhatsApp in 10+ years, Windows in 4+ years, Google services in 2+ years.
It is a choice, stop lying to yourself about having to accept things.
you can ignore those. But services require ID/ facial scans is becoming more pervasive, and it only serves one thing surveillance.
No no no fucking NO!
Do NOT accept this! Do NOT normalize this! DO NOT COMPLY!
Did you really need to see that youtube video? If it was that important, then find another way. Lie. Get a downloader. Get creative. Or walk away, since it was probably not that important
DON’T SELL YOUR IDENTITY FOR CONVENIENCE. DON’T WILLINGLY FEED THE SPIES MORE INFORMATION.
And when they require age verification of the o/s then what?
Take back control of your OS. Use a different OS if you need to.
Yup. I’m gonna learn programming if I have to to remove it from my distro if necessary
Then you use another. Adapt
you just did your part to normalize it.
Are you giving up your privacy to a profit driven corporation who absolutely can’t be trusted with it, just because you want to watch a video that has no real point other than entertainment?
That’s what normalisation of age verification looks like…
I don’t use services that ask me to prove my age, beyond a drop-down date picker, in which case I was born in 1969.
On April 20, right ?
I always pick Jan 1 1970
An epoch baby!
For YouTube, use a VPN that terminates in Albania. Like magic, no more forced sign ins, or ads, or age checks.
Why is that?
Their laws don’t allow online advertising (or something, I’m not clear on the actual details).
No ads on YouTube, Spotify can still play ads for premium (but they don’t make any money from them), and you can play mobile games without having to deal with ads too.
Any suggestions on VPNs that do that?
I haven’t age verified anything and I don’t plan to. It’s only normal when you normalize it. If something will no longer allow me access without verifying my age, I will either find a way around it or I will no longer use that thing. If Youtube is not going to let me watch age restricted videos, so what? I will not watch age restricted videos on Youtube. I will instead use an addon to find them on odysee or peertube instead if possible, or I’ll just live my life accepting that video probably wasn’t one I really needed that contained the only key to living a happy life. It’s not that important, certainly not important enough to verify my age to the surveillance police.
If they try to make me age verify my home internet connection, well then I’m gonna have to get real creative, sure, but rest assured I will (with the help of the rest of the privacy-oriented community) find ways to obfuscate the fuck out of all traffic in and out of my network so thoroughly it won’t even matter if they know who owns my internet connection because it won’t even be relevant anymore. VPN everything. Become an open relay. Join the I2P project. Embrace mesh networking. Fuck them, they can’t stop us all.
I haven’t been able to watch age restricted videos on YouTube for many years since I closed my google account.
I’m used to not being able to watch or go anywhere I want.
I haven’t tried for age restricted, but ytdlp works for those “sign in to verify you’re not a bot” prompts. Might be worth checking out if it works for those too. Or just you know, fuck yt off.
Why are you not using a VPN?
But don’t you still have to pass various websites’ internal checks in order to access their protected NSFW content?
A VPN far as I know is useful for avoiding regional restrictions when it comes to content viewing.
No. Just exit to a country/state that doesn’t require age checks. Porn sites are not wasting any more effort than they have to checking IDs in places that don’t require it
Yes, but I’m not just talking about porn, and I do think some sites enforce age checks regardless of local or international law.
But… that’s just an impression, and I haven’t done anything remotely like a full test, so far.
(see the sibling comment)
Depends on how the site implements things. Age verification can be regardless of region, or it can just be for specific regions. This holds true for pretty much any feature.
YouTube pretty reliably blocks VPNs. The solution is to either not use their service, or accept the fact you can’t view some videos, and move on.
I’ve never had youtube block my VPN. Is they just something they only do on chrome or have I just been lucky so far?
They don’t block it for logged in users yet, just like reddit, but if you are logged out and have no cookies then they will block the playback for known VPN IPs.
youtube doesnt block vpn unless its one of the free crappy ones, reddit however will block vpns though.
Though I’m not going to say who and where my vpn is, I found a server that doesn’t block my vpn. Also, they don’t block Tor
I suppose it’s possible you’re flying under the radar, if you’re not using a large-ish VPN provider.
I’d also be checking for DNS leaks, out of paranoia.
Not really. At least with Proton, I can just change the exit and it’ll work.
That said, I can’t be bothered to do that most of the time. I’m not missing anything by not watching YouTube videos.
Mullvad and also never had an issue with YT
Weird. For me it appears like in the last ~wk they’ve dropped the hard block, and are now using captcha.
It’s entirely possible I’m getting caught up in some A/B testing, because of my exits of choosing.
Hasn’t yet.
Is becoming, yes. There are still plenty of opportunities to stop it provided that the democratic process remains somewhat functional and governments have not gone into “we are the rulers, we decide whatever we want, screw the will of the people” mode yet.
I don’t have the answer on how far on the path toward that aforementioned mode we are. :(
It doesn’t have to be. While the real issue is like all surveillance, it will get pushed back against and then repackaged later as a “new” idea again.
We’ve been doing this song and dance since the Clipper Chips.
Once the politicians start realizing they cannot legislate math and that they are also at risk under these systems, we’ll see bigger pushback to them again.
I refuse.
