When I logged into BlueSky this morning to post a blog entry (for work), I was greeted by this challenge:
If this wasn’t bad enough, I then had to deal with these two emails.
First Email - Age Verification
Here’s the first one:
Second Email - Age Verification
The problem with age verification? It collected my name, last four of my social security #, home address, and phone number. It’s not hard to imagine what nefarious purposes this data could be put to, especially by Governments that have decided to establish centralized databases that track everything you do.
What is Kids Web Services?
Curious about Kids Web Services since I didn’t know anything, I visited their website. On that site they have several FAQs, with the one focused on age verification:
Age Verification: Some content, features and services are only available to users who meet a certain age requirement. A developer may seek to verify that you are the required age before granting access to age-restricted content, features, or services. Parent Verification: The privacy laws of certain countries require companies to acquire permission from a parent or guardian for their child to access an online game or service that collects personal information. To comply with these laws, companies are required to take steps to verify that the person providing consent is an adult before providing access to the child. We offer several ways to verify your age depending on which country you or your child is in. The developer of the game or digital experience chooses which of our provided methods are available to you. Once you’re verified, KWS stores minimal data needed to remember your verified status across games and digital services that use KWS. We only store your hashed (i.e. scrambled) email address and certain metadata, such as timestamp and method used…
I don’t know about you, but this makes me increasingly nervous, especially in the shadow of stories like this one.