The Voices in My Head

So I had a weird dream last night. It was a dream of a magical school. No, not like Harry Potter. This was both more mundane and more magical at the same time.

It started off with a scene next to an abandoned minibus. The really small kind from the 60s. Opening the door at the rear revealed a portal to some strange primary (that’s elementary, my dear Watson) school, where all the kids seemed to be having fun. Significantly, the minibus had a space for a bus number, which was blanked over with white paper inside. Normally, this make of minibus has no such space in the waking world. Cue scene two. (more…)

As you may be aware, immediately after submitting the details found in that language study book and verifying “my” age that way, I contacted Linden Lab to let them know that their system was accepting bad data, giving rise to false positives entering the system. I dutifully entered a support ticket, expecting them to investigate, see me openly tell them I am age-verifeid with bad data, and cancel my status as age-verified.

Linden Lab has closed the support ticket, and I am still officially noted as age-verified.

So there you have it. LL is properly informed, through their formal channels for such information, that there is bad data in the age verification system. I raised a ticket to highlight this, and they closed the ticket, and did not remove my status as age-verified. This means they are either unable or unwilling to remove false positives from the age verification database, even when properly notified of such false positives.

Consider that the official reason for this system is to prevent minors from accessing adult content. In my opinion, this demonstrates that the system is not able to fulfil the stated mission.

In response to Linden Lab’s latest attempt to persuade the unimpressed masses to give away critical personal information verify their ages, they made another blog post. In response, I browsed over to my vast collection of language study books. One of them contains an image of an actual ID card, both sides. I have no idea whether the actual information on that card is fictitious or not, but for the sake of the guy illustrated, I would certainly hope so.

I used the name as presented in that language textbook, along with the ID number printed in it. Bear in mind, I broke no laws in obtaining this data, and indeed, students are encouraged to pretend to be this person when practising the language. I was simply being a good student. I did however, invent an address for him, one which quite possibly isn’t even a real address. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards that his address and date of birth are printed in the book too.

Surprisingly, Integrity accepted this data as wholly valid, and says I am now age- and identity-verified. Never mind that the person I verified as is at best entirely fictitious, and at worst entirely unaware of the impersonation. Fortunately for him (if he is real), I do not intend using the data maliciously, although doubtless someone already has by now, given the public location I obtained the data from.

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“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”

Said Hamlet. And, to continue in more modern English…

“…is it better to carry on suffering quietly, or to bravely enter a useless and suicidal battle which you know is already lost?”

But, I might ask,

“…is it better to carry on suffering quietly, or to enter a dangerous battle whose outcome you can’t possibly know at this time?”

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