Age verifications methods - downsides

Questions
1

Hello,

Lately, I’ve been having an internal debate regarding some age verification methods. Setting aside the fact that ideally there shouldn’t be a need to verify anything at all, I’d like to know what the downsides would be if, for example, iOS or Android automatically verified your age in cases where a credit card is already registered on the phone. At first glance (I’m not an expert in the field, which is why I’m asking here), this wouldn’t seem to pose a privacy risk from third parties, as the operating system would only confirm that you are of legal age without sharing any data. Nor would it imply greater control over your data by Apple or Google, since I believe credit cards are already fully normalized in the digital realm.

I welcome any clarifications or contributions. Thanks in advance!

2

I don’t even have a credit card. It is not common in all parts of the world. Also, I really wonder how you believe one can verify a credit card without going to connect through some service that will collect data.

The better way to do this is via a government login supported verification that gives you a certificate without any identifier but I am confident that this will not hold and people will clone them or find ways to distribute them. There is simply too much incentive for teens to find ways around this (I surely would have).

Besides that a very bad implication is also that because it will be impossible to enforce this on the world wide web it will only lead to illegal websites to grow with no governance and probably worse outcomes.

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