Linden Lab has posted more details on their age verification. yet again, they are dropping the ball.
They want land owners to flag their parcels if they have mature content, and will shortly be imposing penalties against any land owner who doesn’t comply. That’d fine as far as it goes. Except… so far, only concierge-level landowners have been given the option to do so. there are an awful lot of land owners with adult content on this grid (which was sold to us as 18+ only) who do not have the option of verifying with LL’s chosen “trustworthy” (if you can believe that) 3rd party supplier, as LL has not yet rolled out verification to them. Even for land owners, this will make them very lonely in their palaces, as no one else 9except concierge users) can, at present, verify, and only verified users will be allowed into such flagged parcels.
yes, LL is being remarkably stupid in how they are presenting this. It’s remarkably stupid in core concept too, but the presentation is just as stupid.
So how does it affect me personally?
As a UK citizen (not something I usually admit to, but I do hold such a passport), I am officially asked not to provide my passport number to any authority that is non-government. (Yes, I know about job agencies wanting to see proof of entitlement to work in the UK, and there are alternative means for the cognoscenti). As a non-driver, driving license number is not an option.
Yet, it would appear I could in theory verify with my street address. I opt out of the publicly readable version of the electoral register, so it is unlikely anyone would find my name there, not to mention that I only very recently returned to the UK, so it is unlikely any public database would have my recent address.
As I have an unusual name, it is also very likely that they do not have my name written correctly in those databases they do have access to - I can easily spot the source of most paper-based junk mail by how my name is mispelt. If they have previously harvested my details using one of those sources, that will again make verification effectively impossible for me.
Nonetheless, as a land owner, it seems I am required to do something that is both highly distasteful to me (provide private info to a known data reselling company) and quite likely impossible as my details are probably not on any public records.
Nonetheless, I have decided I will attempt to verify the day before I move house, which will instantly render that harvested data invalid.