The Voices in My Head

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.

In the interests of integrity (my integrity, not the company Integrity), I immediately contacted Linden lab and let them know about it. They asked me to file a support ticket, which I duly did.

I am not at liberty to paste the LL staffer’s text (I didn’t ask permission, they didn’t volunteer it), I can and will duplicate the original text I wrote there.

Hello. I was experimenting with the age verification system just now. The system let me verify successfully with a name and ID details taken from a [deleted] language study textbook. I am not sure if the ID card illustrated in that book is a real one or not, but Integrity accepted it as valid data, even though logically it should not have been accepted.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes before they remove my status as age- and identity-verified.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Of the methods that Linden Lab have chosen to make available as a means of proving that I am over 18, all of them are either unavailable to me, as I lack the ID in question (non-driver), or giving out such information presents what to me is an unacceptable security risk.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Linden Lab, Negative, Warda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.