An age verification company that boasted that they protect users privacy through a “double blind” process was busted monitoring URLs visited by users.
One of the things I have long warned about is that age verification companies are in a position to collect vast amounts of personal information. This would prove extremely tempting on the part of those companies who could potentially profit off of said personal information.
The slimy age verification industry that has rapidly grown over the last year or so have long argued that they can be trusted. They argue that their technology is sound, is accurate, and uses methods to also protect the personal information of users. The thing is, there is a lot of money to be had selling said personal information, making it extremely tempting for companies to pretend to keep users anonymous, while at the same time, making off with loads of personal information so they can sell it to shady data brokers afterwards. With lax laws in some jurisdictions, the penalties for selling off people’s personal information would also be highly profitable as well.
While this is a likely scenario, it was always a theoretical scenario on my part that could very easily potentially happen. Today, I learned that this is no longer theory, but something that has actually happened – and it’s by a company that is supposedly “protecting” large websites to boot.
AgeGo, an age verification company that provides age verification technology for XVideos, Xnxx and Tnaflix, billed itself as a company that uses “double blind” methods to ensure that user information is not collected was apparently busted collecting information on what URLs users were visiting. That wasn’t the only information they were collecting as well. From Biometric Update:
A firm claiming to provide “double blind” age assurance services to pornography sites adapting to France’s online safety law has been found to be collecting unauthorized user data, according to a technical report released by AI Forensics.
The additional data collection and retention appears to have been tacked on to biometric age assurance methods provided by third-party vendors, in a case that should raise alarms among those hoping to establish public trust in digital age checks.
AI Forensics’ findings are damning. “We observed that, despite claiming to offer ‘double anonymity’ options (intended to hide user traffic), AgeGO collects the URL of the video the user attempts to watch.”
“In addition, when users select the ‘selfie’ verification method, their webcam stream is transmitted directly to Amazon Web Services,” which is listed as the provider of selfie-to-document verification.
AgeGO also forces users to disclose their email address to complete the age verification process, which it says is needed to create an AgeGO account.
For those keeping score, this seems to complete the grand slam for having every prediction come true with age verification technology. I’ve argued that age verification is a privacy and security nightmare, prone to hacks and leaks. This was confirmed by French privacy watchdog, CNIL and reconfirmed with study after study. Then, to prove the point further, such systems have already built a history of leaks, breaches, and hacks.
I’ve argued that this technology would push users to other websites that don’t implement such technology. Data repeatedly shows that this is exactly what is happening.
I’ve argued that these systems are easily circumvented. That was proven when people started using VPNs, video game characters, and fake IDs to defeat these systems. I’ve also argued that slapping on artificial intelligence isn’t going to help a darned thing and research confirms that.
I’ve argued that these age verification laws are prone to censorship creep where more and more content gets censored by age verification. That has happened over and over and over again.
So, with this latest age verification scandal, I believe that is every warning about age verification coming to fruition. Unless I’m missing something else, I believe we got a perfect score here. Everything that people like myself thought could go wrong has now formally gone wrong.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.
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