LL on Age Verification Again
Monday, December 10th, 2007In 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.