> At present the project is focused on mobile platforms, specifically Android and iOS, as they cover the vast majority of users and real-world use cases. (..) Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope.
This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale.
At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is increasing though, which worries me a lot, and day after day there is a new attempt to shove it down your throat if you want to be considered a member of society. Seeing that a lot of countries (including mine) are pushing for age verification, and the whole thing about Android blocking 'sideload', by the end of 2026 you won't be considered a human being without a government certified smartphone.
I do find it interesting that in an attempt to bring more people into modern society (via ability to access everything from an inexpensive smartphone), we're creating a stratification in society.
My brother hates tech more than me, and only has an old flip phone. I'm always surprised by the random problems he runs into as a result. Unresponsive desktop sites that beg you to download apps are the worst.
Another recent news about mandated app use: Ryanair now (from November) requires using their app for the boarding pass, no more printouts from the desktop. If you have no smartphone or its battery has run out, then that's your fault. Also, they refuse to show the QR code for the boarding pass in a mobile browser via the website, you must use their app.
I disagree. It's a tandem, and corporations and the government are increasingly welded together.
Also, I'm not too worried about the airport usecase as we're already being tracked and surveilled and inspected there as much as possible.
But it's another step to normalize and mandate phone and app use. The puzzle pieces are falling in place. Soon, AI could screen-capture your phone screen to detect suspicious activity, and track every tap you do, also taking pictures with the front-facing camera without you knowing, listening on the mic, etc. etc., connecting it all to your real identity. Because why not? If it's done step by step, nobody will care at all. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, but it looks like the end game and I see no principled political stance against it, nor any insurmountable technical hurdles.
This is a great example of how this whole requirement hasn't been properly thought out.
> Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope.
What I would like to take from this is that, by their own definition, desktop apps are out of scope for Age Verification. So does that mean we will see a return of the 'desktop applications' instead of everything being a web service ?
One can dream perhaps. Until then adults who are willing to 'do what they're told' will be the ones who are inconvenienced by this constantly.
Edit: Also this will completely disable any new phone OS' being developed. Why would anyone bother when you can't verify your wallet to do anything online.
> Also this will completely disable any new phone OS' being developed. Why would anyone bother when you can't verify your wallet to do anything online.
This already the case today, you can't run your bank's app or government eID apps on anything but Google or Apple devices.
Not in EU. Many banks mandate you either have an iPhone or Google approved Android as 2FA. Those fucking idiots have killed their own competition options.
Effectively, if the client doesn't download the App, they will never be able to log into the homebanking website again. The bank enforced this and now if you login normally it will redirect to a page where you can download the app or use up one of three remaining chances to login. I am down to two. From now on, I'm only able to use ATM's or go to an actual teller to make payments and such. The app requires that I have a Google account or an Apple account and I think that's just messed up, specially for a Portuguese bank.
The app on the google store is pt.novobanco.nbsmarter if anyone is curious. It has interesting permissions as well.
All of them now require some kind of 2FA, everywhere. This is due to a legal requirement on all EEA payment providers that they require 2FA for almost everything since 2020, including accessing your account on their website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_customer_authentication
TOTP codes would be allowed by the regulation, as would biometric approaches or separate physical tokens, but in practice every bank I've used in recent years (quite a few, mostly Spanish but also in Belgium & Switzerland) require that you accept a confirmation prompt or similar in their app.
Please stop spreading disinformation. I live in the EU and my EU bank supports desktop browsers + Card reader matching everything the mobile app can do.
Well not in Germany. Some banks accept their branded authenticators, some of them don't.
ING in Germany forces you to either have a single Google approved smartphone or a single authenticator, not both.
DKB requires a paid Girocard to use the authenticator or a Google approved smartphone.
N26 requires a single phone but they are a bit lenient. However they have way too many incidents reported where they closed people's accounts without a reason.
The traditional banks have high fees. One pays upwards 10 - 15 Euros a month for Sparkasse or Commerzbank for a simple checking account. Using Sparkasse means you cannot deposit money outside county (yes county and country) borders. Many traditional banks have high fees for withdrawing outside the network.
So one is forced to choose between modern banks with better online experience that's tied to Google and Apple or a traditional bank with oftentimes awful online experience and high fees.
My German bank started to require an Android or IOS smartphone [0]. No dedicated HW, no desktop. I actually dumped my well working Xiaomi Phone because it was either security or banking.
Some neobanks are limited to mobile-only. The OP's statement was too general. It's also true that some regular banks are phasing out 2FA via SMS, which is outdated per EU regulations, and may not easily offer alternatives to their app for 2FA codes.
This has been true since it stopped being true for Internet Explorer. I've not noticed any significant change over time. I have been using Firefox for over 20 years.
True, but there are alternatives to using these services, though a bit more inconvenient. What will be the alternative to the age verification mobile app?
Back when Microsoft said they were going to let Android apps run on Windows before killing it off for I think the third time, I was excited that I'd be able to run my bank app on my desktop. The app is a simple process to login, but the website has about 50 steps to login making it unappealing to use (probably on purpose).
To me it reads that, since many people already believe this is more about tracking than safety, they are focusing on a device which is the perfect surveillance system, and which conveniently already accounts for 7+ hours of many peoples daily computer/internet interaction.
A desktop computer doesn't necessarily have a microphone or camera, and doesn't necessarily have to be connected to the internet. I'd wager most crime, including that which affects children is done on "disconnected devices" in this sense.
Even though it sounds like _you_ probably know this, Cory Doctorow has been sounding this alarm for years. As usual, it seems he was right about the possibility of this being a legitimate battlefront in the (actual, non-hyperbolic) war on freedom.
I think it's more that smartphones have built in security measures that prevent hacking. It already works for bank apps, so why not use it for government stuff too?
It sucks, yes, but that's probably how these people think.
but if age verification is used for what it claims it is such hacking protections are not only unnecessary but fundamentally harmful (i.e. if a child hacks their PC it's fine if they circumvent age verification, the main responsibility still lies with parents and as such tools like parent controls are much more relevant)
the main reason is that this is not a reference implementations or "this is the app everyone must use" case but a "to see what is technical possible/practical" "research/POV" project
this also makes the "EU age verification app" title quite misleading
> I think it's more that smartphones have built in security measures that prevent hacking.
Which is a joke when you know that most phones in the wild are using an obsolete OS version (most of the time due to lack of software support from the manufacturer, but sometimes because some people just refuse to update because updates are in fact downgrades — looking at you iOS).
I used to use a feature phone and I genuinely didn't miss any of the same things.
my commute is a really long ride and I just don't like using my phone in it.
My dumb phone had music system and sd card (I finally managed to have that sd card fixed after an year of using that dumbphone without even an sd card for music)
I just used to stare into nothingness / surrounding and think. (Yes I have edited it because I didn't used to think, I used to overthink just as I am doing right now lol)
Not that productive, but my current phone is so slow that I can't even tell you guys or start telling you. It takes me 1/2 a minute just to unlock it and the only thing its truly good at is having a music player run and some occasional hackernews or pokemon showdown or youtube scrolling.
But tbh, I don't have any banking apps etc. so to me there isn't thaaat much of a difference. I feel like a macbook is genuinely nice as it has that less friction and a pc is great too as compared to a phone for the most part when I am at home.
My screentime is usually just some shorts that I occassionaly watch on phone when I am extremelyyy bored.
I am sad that my dumb phone was in my bag one day and then it just stopped (working??) , I swear I kinda regret having my dad's old phone. I am not sure how he was even using it.
Smartphones are a lot more portable than desktop PCs or even laptops. Unless you enter everyone's home to take an inventory of their devices, it stands to reason that you're going to see more smartphones than anything else by just looking around.
> Please get off of your high-horse and actually try to interact with wider world and not the IT bubble :)
That seems pretty rude and uncalled for, why would you say that to me? Do you think that I don't have friends outside of the "IT bubble" myself, or that I don't have my own spouse who is a non-tech person?
But as long as there are still people using desktop computers, removing access from them is an overreach and makes these ideas totally undemocratic. I am frankly baffled that an organization having the principles and know-how of the EU can even think of gating access to information with something so slipshod.
The only eventuality where this is acceptable is when desktop computers won't even be gated, and then if anyone can circumvent the problem with a computer, why is anyone even bothering with the whole thing...
> I am frankly baffled that an organization having the principles and know-how of the EU can even think of gating access to information with something so slipshod.
That doesn't surprise me at all. Principles in a government body don't exist. They are all crooks.
“They are all crooks” is the motto of another kind of personal corruption: the kind where people abdicate any responsibility to detail or distinction for the sheer indulgence of moral posture without any of the work.
Every time someone says “they’re all crooks” they are the enablers of crooks. The crooks couldn’t do it without people like that.
It doesn't surprise me either, because I'd never be able to use a phrase like "the principles and know-how of the EU" with a straight face. (To be fair, you could replace "the EU" with almost any large bureaucracy.)
I understand we're all old and cynical here, but one of the tenets of discussions on HN would be to take someone's arguments at face value, so I prefer to believe that the EU as an organization actually wants to diminish social exclusion and discrimination. I'm not sure if I'd give the same credit to any other capitalist entity, but the EU does not have the implicit goal of increasing revenue for its shareholders to subvert any of the others stated.
And as a prerequisite enforcing dependency on titanic (and in my case foreign) tech companies that are free to unilaterally ban you from communicating with your government. This is a BAD idea.
Depending on the implementation, you can run the app on your computer. I don't see why the iOS app wouldn't work on macOS, and there are tons of tools to run Android apps on Windows and Linux.
If the actual implementations do copy the dependency on Play Integrity and other such APIs, that does become a problem (getting past that is a major annoyance on amd64 computers because there are so few real amd64 Android devices that can be spoofed).
However, the law regarding these apps specifically states that the use of this app must be optional. I'm not sure websites and services will implement other solutions, but in theory you should not need a phone unless you want the convenience and privacy factor of app verification. I expect alternatives (such as 1 cent payments with credit cards in your name) to stick around, at least until we get a better idea about how this thing will work out in practice.
Waydroid on linux comes to mind. It sort of semi worked out of the box on archlinux but I can't try to imagine setting up somewhere else..
Wait a minute, while writing this comment, I realized that there was a guy who sort of packaged waydroid into flatpak-ish to run android apps in flatpak.
I am not an EU citizen but if somebody is & they want this age verification app on desktop, maybe the best way might be to support this android translation layer to convert this EU app into something that can run through flatpak and then use linux I suppose.
I mean, some of y'all are so talented that I feel like surely someone would do it if things do go this way! So not too much to be worried about I suppose :>
I've been saying this for years: eventually not having your phone on you and powered up at all times will not be a crime, but it will be grounds for questioning and search.
One day, there will be a knock on your door.
"Good morning, this is the police. Is there something wrong with your phone? Is your phone broken? Can we provide you with a charge?"
"No, I must have turned it off accidentally."
"Can we assist you with an upgrade? The newer models don't have power buttons."
I think you're exactly right, and the groundwork is being laid today by the standards society is setting for everybody. People will assume a lack of phone or the presence of a phone but lack of usage / content on it, makes you guilty of some sort of crime similar to owning a burner phone.
Tell somebody you use your phone less than 10 minutes a day and look at their face change.
> Tell somebody you use your phone less than 10 minutes a day and look at their face change.
While not less than 10 minutes per day for me, but I was having this argument on reddit over the iPhone Air - people couldn't fathom that there's someone out there that is not on their phone 24/7, and doesn't use their phone as their main computing device.
I clock in at under an hour screen time most days. It's the least ergonomic device for me to do anything remotely serious. Can't even stand typing on a virtual keyboard. My laptop is, and will remain, my main interface to the net and communication with others.
You'd think I was some kind of weird hermit luddite because of it.
What does seem to be happening is rather that the assumption of having a phone will be built into every little thing - in particular mobile payments are becoming mandatory in some places. Transportation including parking is sometimes locked behind an app. We could also see stuff like landlords moving to smart locks that a tenant open with their phone.
Since children are universally not considered real people with real rights schools requiring them to have the right apps to perform their schoolwork are to be expected.
Don't worry, that feature will inevitably be phased out because only a small percentage of people use it.
Every new secure government identification/authentication/verification thing will try to 'just' use Android/IOS, because 'everyone' has one those smartphones.
"Google, google everywhere.
It's attestation is gonna be a nightmare."
Idk I created this just right now lol.
But on a serious note, Maybe check out my comment on something known as the android_translation_layer with flatpak to see if that might help to run that app atleast in linux.
If you don't have a phone, you cannot create a new Google or Vk (social network) account today. I expect there will be more things you won't be able to do if you don't want to leak your information.
Then you can't use this method of identification, just like you can't use it now. Surely it won't be the only way to identify yourself online. If this provides a frictionless way to do this for 95% of people then it's already a huge win.
No, this is worse because it solidifies Apple/Google's duopoly over the smart phone market even more than it already is.
Not only that, but having this locked behind something that works for 95% of users means the other 5% will never have enough leverage for any other implementations to be approved. Which is absolutely unacceptable for such an essential feature like age verification.
Why can't we continue with an open web standard? We should have complete interoperability regardless of whether I'm using a google smartphone or a custom os I wrote in my garage or bsd or nixos. That is the entire point of web standards: to create the ability to communicate with one-another regardless of system design, so long as standards are properly implemented.
The target, which are the children who access "forbidden" websites without authorization is likely to be lower than amount of people who won't be able to access due to those narrow specs.
This is plain stupid. Countries (e.g. where I live) already have systems like SPID or CIE that can authenticate users using a multitude of factors, for example I can authenticate myself with a QR and a phone, or I can not even have a phone at all and have a 20 euros NFC reader connected to the PC and can authenticate using my digital document and a PIN.
No? I had been with dumb phone for almost a year from like 2024-25? What point are you trying to make as I think that there are some good dumb phones in the market which even support things like signal.
I used to use the messaging app through SMS tho, the people that knew me (that 1 friend gets a shoutout here who used to msg me through SMS in the world of whatsapp and my mom!!)
Most phones are used for two things that my father used to quote: Whatsapp (messaging app) and youtube(social media)
Entertainment could somewhat be offloaded via music player etc. into dumb phones and to be really honest, I think that even things like hackernews could be operated on those dumb phones if given the ability to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdYrBpBJRI4 : this is the dumbphone which supports signal btw. Wish there was a way to make app for dumbphones like these just as how we can make apps for androids.
I was shocked by how much feature packed my chinese dumb phone was for 11.27$ lol. It just didn't have internet & yeah games as well.
A phone isn't enough, you need an Apple or Google account as well. So if your Google account gets banned, you might as well just jump of a bridge because it's over for you.
App not available doesn't mean age verification not required. You can be required to confirm your account from your mobile phone or scan some QR code on mobile that will take you to age verification session and once completed you can continue from the desktop.
I mean, otherwise would be like not being bound to speed limits if you don't have a speedometer.
>I mean, otherwise would be like not being bound to speed limits if you don't have a speedometer.
That only works in a world in which the government provides speedometers, which restrict the vehicle automatically, and in this case they refuse to provide them at all for blue cars.
So a loss of mobile phone will mean loss of everything? Maybe we should just kill people if they lose a portable mobile device which can just stop working by itself? I fully expect there to be some idiotic scenarios where to get x, you need to already have x.
Be as much work as possible in all places, where the default option is to do something with your mobile phone. If enough people do that, then the alternative to using your phone will need to have good process, so that it is not holding up everyone else.
If something doesn't work without your phone, report it being broken. If they tell you to use your phone, tell them you don't have one. If possible, leave their service, if they don't care.
We have to make it their issue as much as possible, when they try to push their shit onto us.
Surprisingly often there is a workable alternative to using ones smart phone. We have to make use of those as much as possible, so that the cost for them to get rid of those options will be high and they think twice before doing that and offending us.
They will terrorize us like that and then, they will use implanted chips. One primary one backup. It is extremely rare to lose both. Possibly the primary will be in your head.
Why would loss of a mobile phone be that dramatic? Go buy a new one? Having the equipment in something that requires an equipment is pretty reasonable when the price range is within the reach of everybody.
> What I would like to take from this is that, by their own definition, desktop apps are out of scope for Age Verification. So does that mean we will see a return of the 'desktop applications' instead of everything being a web service ?
I doubt it unless something odd happens like triggering some reaction. They’ve looked at the data and see the majority of society using “phones”, which are really just increasingly small computers that happen to have a feature to also make calls; and they’ve decided that this trap they’re leading us all into can and may even need to stay open and inviting for a while anyways until the older people die off and desktop form factors kind of fall by the wayside, before the trap is even ready to be sprung. In the mean time they’ll just gaslight and lie about what they’re doing, to save and protect the children of course, until the day that you tune around from a distraction and the trap door is shut behind you.
It’s the same MO as always, with the gullible and naive enablers being essentially the worse threat than the actual perpetrators.
I've posted this as a response but I'll post it again since it seems like a lot of people are confused about the project:
This project is not THE digital wallet, it is an early prototype of the wallet (which can be criticized for what it is, but the issue is somewhat orthogonal).
The actual infrastructure is not based on attenstation, if you read the guidelines (or the readme) they actually want to implement a double-blind approach with ZKPs, which imo is significantly better than a challenge-response pub key system in term of privacy as some suggested. And allows for cross-platform (and in theory hardware) support.
If you're not familiar this would mean the verifier doesn't learn anything except a statement about attributes (age, license, etc); and the EU doesn't learn what attributes have been tried to verify or by who.
This is misleading. They are merely exploring options that may allow for issuer unlinkability, but they are actually implementing a linkable solution based on standard cryptography that allows issuers (member state governments) to collude with any verifier (a website requiring age verification) to de-anonymize users. The solution is linkable because both the issuer and the verifier see the same identifiers (the SD-JWT and its signature).
The project is supposed to prove that age verification is viable so that the Commission can use it as a success story, while it completely disregards privacy by design principles in its implementation. That the project intends to perhaps at some point implement privacy enhancing technologies doesn't make it any better. Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.
It will also be trivial to circumvent [1], potentially leading to a cycle of obfuscation and weakening of privacy features that are present in the current issuer linkable design.
> This is misleading. They are merely exploring options that may allow for issuer unlinkability, but they are actually implementing a linkable solution based on standard ECDSA..
The repository we're commenting on has the following in the spec[0]: "A next version of the Technical Specifications for Age Verification Solutions will include as an experimental feature the Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP)". So given that the current spec is not in use, this seems incorrect.
> It will also be trivial to circumvent
If you have a key with the attribute of course you can 'bypass' it, I don't think that's bug. The statement required should be scaled to the application it's used for; this is "over-asking" is considered in the law[1].
> The project is supposed to prove that age verification is viable, while it completely disregards privacy by design principles in its implementation. That the project intends to perhaps at some point implement privacy enhancing technologies doesn't make it any better.
I agree that in it's current state it is effectively unusable due to the ZKPs being omitted.
> So given that the current spec is not in use, this seems incorrect.
No, that's not what they mean. They just mean that the spec (and for now only the spec, not the implementation) will be amended with an experimental feature, while the implementation will not (yet).
I understand (?) that you are interpreting this as: "we'll later document something that we've already implemented", but this is not the case. That isn't how this project operates, and I'm intimately familiar with the codebase so I'm completely certain they haven't implemented this at all. There is no beginning or even a stub for this feature to land, which is problematic, as an unlinkable signature scheme isn't just a drop-in replacement, but requires careful design. Hence privacy by design.
> If you have a key with the attribute of course you can 'bypass' it, I don't think that's bug.
Anyone of age can make an anonymous age attribute faucet [1] for anyone to use. That it's not technically a bug doesn't make it any less trivial to circumvent. I wouldn't expect the public or even the Commission to make such a distinction. They'll clamor that the solution is broken and that it must be fixed, and at that point I expect the obfuscation and weakening of privacy features to start.
So as we already know that the solution will be trivial to circumvent, it shouldn't be released without at least very clearly and publicly announcing it's limitations. Only if such expectations are correctly set, we have a chance not to end up in a cycle where the open source and privacy story will be abandoned in the name of security.
[1] Because of the linkable signature scheme in principle misuse can be detected by issuers, but this would be in direct contradiction with their privacy claims (namely that the issuer pinky promises not to record any issued credentials or signatures).
I don't know the specific ZKP variant if that's what you mean, but the general architecture of the system is best described in the 38C3 talk from earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKtklN8mOo0
There are some choices that are debatable (more on the issuer side iirc), but imho for the goals it has it's a competently made architecture.
This is hardware attestation in a nutshell: a double edged sword, and a sharp one at that.
The biggest issue is that the attestation hardware and the application client is the same device with the same manufacturer, who also happens to have a slight conflict of interest between monetizing customers and preserving any sort of privacy.
IMHO the pro-attestation forces are so overwhelming that we should all cherish the moment while we have anything open left.
My understanding of the "double edged sword" idiom is that the tool has both downsides and upsides. What are the upsides to restricting what I can do with the hardware I paid for?
The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
That seems completely contrary to the spirit of EU laws and regulations, which tend to be about protecting the consumer, preventing monopolies, ensuring people can generally live their lives where all things that are mandatory are owned and ran by the state and foster a certain degree of EU independence, with a recent focus on "digital sovereignty".
This one is a five for one against all of those goals? Harms the customer (you could see this as the polar opposite of GDPR), strengthens entrenched monopolies, force citizens to be serfs of one of two private corporations in order to access information, and on top of that, like it wasn't enough, willingly capitulates to the US as the arbitrates of who is a valid person or not.
This is so against the spirit of the EU itself that it would almost be funny if people weren't serious.
> The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
Please (kindly) ask Paolo De Rosa [1], Policy Officer at the European Commission and driver of many of the decisions behind the wallet and the ARF. His position is one of fatalism: that it's "too late"; the duopoly of Goople is entrenched, and it's therefore not a problem if the wallet project entrenches it even further. Regrettably quite a lot of member states agree, although representatives of France and Germany specifically are frequently standing up to the fatalism.
> The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
Because the EU doesn't actually care about privacy, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to do this and ChatControl. They care about being the main ones to spy on you, and maybe using fines as additional "taxes" on rich foreign companies. That's it.
The app this discussion is about is a reference implementation that is part of a long-term process for building a digital identity app. Specifically, this discussion is about the age verification part of the app, which is the first part expected to be finished but is also only a small part of a much wider ideal.
Europe's dependence on American tech is a major pain point but realistically, there are only two smartphone vendors. If a European vendor does rise up, I'm sure whatever app comes out of this process will happily hook into the hardware attestation API for that OS as well.
This "identity wallet" is such a hostile idea, require identification for everything instead of thinking about how to remove identification (for example, allow anonymous banking, traveling).
But you could do attestation on GrapheneOS, no need to require the users to have Google spyware preinstalled. Google is abusing its position here, attestation should be to verify the security model, not Google's business model..
When scoped to attest the full software stack down to the kernel, yes, because it takes control away from the general purpose computing device that the user supposedly owns. I don't however have a problem with attestation scoped to dedicated hardware security devices such as Yubi Keys.
And if such dedicated hardware is ever required by the law, the manufacturer should be prohibited from bundling any business-related functionality there (such as displaying ads) that can't be turned off without breaking the certification.
Google's ad business model should never be mandated by law, unfortunately lawmakers seem to be unaware that this is what requiring Play Integrity effectively means.
Take any group of a hundred tech people (devs, analysts, architects, etc.), and 95 of them will do everything with their stock Android or IOS smartphone. Maybe 3 will consciously limit their use of that device, and the remaining 2 reluctantly use something sane like GrapheneOS. Those two might pipe up and take a stand for people without smartphones (which includes a very varied swath of people, from Luddites to people with disabilities), but they'll get drowned out by sighs, sheepish looks, and the chorus of 'let's just start with those two smartphone OSes, and if after a year or two people still really need something else, a new project can be started to address that'.
It's not an insane question, it just doesn't get asked.
> The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
Because this is being pushed by lobbyists to use hardware attestation to make it piratically mandatory for every citizen in the EU to be registered to either Apple or Google with a real id for all non-trivial online interactions at all times. The people behind this push neither have the technical knowledge nor care in the slightest that this is the consequence.
I finally took a look at the DSA, and it only mentions anything relevant to age verification in three places:
- Recital 71, which vaguely suggests minors' privacy and security should be extra-protected, but says that services shouldn't process extra personal data to identify them.
- Article 28, which says that platforms should provide a high level of "privacy, safety, and security of minors", again without processing extra personal data to identify them. It also says that the Commision may "issue guidelines", but says nothing suggesting age verification should be implemented.
- Article 35, which says that "large online platforms" should maybe implement age verification.
Furthermore, recital 57 says that the regulations for online platforms shouldn't apply to micro/small enterprises (which has a definition somewhere). All together, I don't see anything suggesting that anyone but the largest online services is being forced to implement age verification right now.
Judging by various posts by the Commision I've seen online, they're certainly pushing for the situation to be seen this way, but de iure, that's currently not happening.
EDIT: I found the guidelines mentioned [0], and a nice commentary on the age verification parts [1].
If implemented according to plan, things like ID cards, drivers' licenses, diplomas, train tickets, and even payment control can be handled within such apps entirely digitally. Aside from age verification, with attribute based authentication you can prove digitally that you're permitted to drive a certain vehicle without revealing your social security number (equivalent).
A healthy dose of cynicism would make clear that the moment such optional infrastructure is rolled out, new legislation can be drafted to "save on expenses" by enforcing this digital model and "protect the kids/fight the terrorists" by forcing age verification on more businesses.
> Aside from age verification, with attribute based authentication you can prove digitally that you're permitted to drive a certain vehicle without revealing your social security number (equivalent).
That doesn't make sense because the government knows about every vehicle and its owner and his social security number and there is no point to hide it. I think you misunderstood something or I misunderstood your comment.
The goal of "bringing identity to your phone" is making identification easier to require it in more cases so that the government knows better what its citizens do. One thing if you are required to fill a 20 fields form to buy a bicycle and another thing if you need just to tap your phone at the cash register.
Yes, but this isn't part of the digital wallet project. As I understand it, the Commision was so impatient with age-verification that they commissioned this project separately, because they didn't want to wait for the full solution, hence it being called a "mini-ID wallet".
I'm certainly not against vigilance and making sure no new laws mandating the use of either this or the full digital wallet sneak through, but my point is that, despite the Commision's misleading public stance, age verification is (mostly) not mandatory today.
That's true, but as this is only a small part of the larger project, it's also targeting a very specific part of legislation.
The README for the age verification spec specifically calls out article 28 of the DSA and the Louvain-la-Neuve Declaration. Neither is aiming to be the mandated age verification mechanism for every single website, but rather a specific tool to solve a specific problem: age limits on social media and big tech websites.
If, or, seeing Denmark's recent bullshit: when, we do get mandatory age requirements, it'll be part of new legislation that will likely take years to go into effect, and, seeing how long it took websites to comply with the GDPR, will start affecting most websites even later. This isn't the doomsday law that I would've expected to come from the US if they were to write something like this, and using privacy-first cryptography does give me some faint hope that this isn't just a big performance to hide malicious intent. This could've been as bad as eIDAS 2.0 with the QACs and other unreasonable technical requirements.
I think the title "EU age verification app not planning desktop support" is misleading because it gives the impression that there will be no way to support EU age verification on the desktop.
This is addressed in the comments:
> It should also be noted that this project is an example of a solution that is considered to meet certain requirements of the DSA, regarding the protection of minors. It does not prevent the use of other solutions that also meet those requirements.
So I think a better title might be "EU age verification example app not planning desktop support"
(don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of how this is implemented, but it's important to be accurate in our critique)
Well, in the end there may only be one thing left we can collectively do, but which we surely won't collectively do, because too many of us are way too comfortable to accept any discomforts: We can avoid using services implementing shit, so that any business that singles out desktop users or disadvantages them, doesn't have much of a customer base. Voting with out feet.
I have very little hope, that the common user will make use of their own agency avoiding a dystopia, or even think about issues associated with their behavior. We can see this everywhere even today. The majority of people are clueless and just accept whatever bone is thrown their way. Need to buy a new phone every year now? OK. Pressured to accept digital surveillance by not even state agencies but private profit oriented companies, that want to sell your data or use it for nefarious purposes? OK. Giving all your communication data to big tech? OK. ... It is all just a big "auto-accept any digital rape" for most people, as they don't even want to think about the technical implications and implications for society. It's all so far above their technological understanding, that they just exit the bus, when it comes to discussing these things. That is the problem we face. How to make the normal person aware and interested in their own digital rights.
Unless you can show a direct cause-and-effect relationship from clicking OK on some form to something negative happening in their real life that impacts them in actual physical real life, a real event at a particular time that they can observe with their eyes that relates to their real life (family, job, social life, going about their day), most people won't care. Otherwise it all blurs to some abstract words and theoretical tinfoil-like worries about the "government" and ufos and sovereign citizens.
We have to assume this is only the first step. The next step will be mandatory identity attestation for everything and your only choices will be to either accept it or not use any services at all.
Depressingly this feels like a long lost battle. I suspect internet freedoms will continue to be eroded and by the time most people care enough it’ll be too late.
My optimistic brain is hopeful for federated services to become the norm and stand up to this kind of crap.
I fear it is already too late, thanks to the phone duopoly and bulletproof secure boot environments. The EU can now make remote attestation mandatory by law.
Tin foil hat time: this is why Google is pushing to kill app sideloading.
Mobile phones are the only platform at the moment that can reasonably be used to enforce mandatory software installs and remote attestation. Removing sideloading can down the road leading to Google (or Apple for IOS) forcing all app store provided apps/browsers to support government authentication APIs like this.
Only available on Android and ios, only installable from Google and Apple App stores (in practice now, but completely when Google tightens control). So much for digital sovereignty.
It makes total sense. The whole point is to punish self-respecting people who use freedom preserving operating systems and treat them as second class citizens.
Depends on whom you ask. Google introducing the developer verification and sideloading on iOS being even bigger hurdle, they want to stay in control on what you use and they want to make sure you don't have possibility to use anything they explicitly permit. Normal desktop is unfortunately too open for that. Discourage people to use desktops and make rely on controlled gardens even more.
Well, yeah. There’s no way to curb the modern cheating epidemic without increasing security measures. Riot Games via Valorant truly pushed the industry so far ahead by reducing their cheating percentages so low that the cost to cheat for more than a few weeks at a time is thousands of dollars a month.
Exactly, remote attestation is only acceptable on your own devices with remote attestation servers that you control.
For example, it would be completely fine to implement remote attestation where devices issued by companies to employees verify their TPM values with company's servers when connecting via VPN.
All other such activities directly infringe on ownership rights.
I don't see the value of remote attestation period. Especially when we talk about the mobile world which is a jungle where even the manufacturer itself doesn't have the full picture of all the code running on the device.
Yeah sure it's guarantees that the device is more or less similar as from the factory... and then what? What am I supposed to do with that information?
This is insane. USA is already pushing sanctions against Europeans via US companies (e.g. Microsoft revoking ICC accounts), and now they are about to tie basic functioning in the society to two US megacorporations. At the very least this will solidify the duopoly.
At this point I don't find it impossible that critics or other "enemies" of US (or Israel) in Europe will get their phones bricked as sanctions, and as a result become second class citizens.
I don't even see the necessity for having hardware attestation. We've had for decades online ID systems that can you can run on any device with an internet connection.
They point out that some other service could do it:
> It should also be noted that this project is an example of a solution that is considered to meet certain requirements of the DSA, regarding the protection of minors. It does not prevent the use of other solutions that also meet those requirements.
As more people move away from spyPhone devices, how is this going to work. Especially having BigTech being able to hold the EU ransom over access to basic government services.
A phone should not be a requirement to partake in society, and I´d even argue the same for a bank account. But I see this month another strong push towards a digital Euro. Is that the true purpose behind this push for .eu ID Apps?
Here's my crack at a good-enough solution for the U.S.
It doesn't have a ton of granularity - but the concept is shovel ready now, dirt cheap, and privacy preserving.
3) Extract its public-key and id (this binds the credential you're creating to your device)
4) The user copies this data to their bank's Age-Verification-Section
5) The bank creates an object that it signs with an attestation of the user's age (KYC) and their pass-key-public-key
6) The user copies this back to app.hornpub.click
7) The passkey is verified on the server, the bank's signature is verified by the server, some other meta-data is verified to make sure nothing weird is happening.
8) The user's age has been verified by their bank without the bank knowing who is asking for verification
* This method is more private than anything requiring sharing your photo-id online
* This method doesn't trigger GLBA or GDPR (user copies data themselves)
What happens if some party is able to get logs of the bank's age attestation signings and of hornpub.click's steps #2 and #6? It appears this would present some risk of matching up hornpub.click accounts with real IDs.
This is called "linkability" and ideally should be avoided so anonymous age verification can be safe.
What's crazy to me is why they didn't go for that kind of implementation. This works well, ensures privacy, can be audited easily, and doesn't need a f*cking app on my phone.
If you read the guidelines they actually want to implement a double-blind approach with ZKPs, which imo is significantly better than a challenge-response pub key system in term of privacy.
If you're not familiar this would mean the verifier doesn't learns anything except a statement about attributes (age, license, etc); and the EU doesn't learn what attributes have been tried to verify or by who.
What would need to happen in the United States to implement a reliable ZKP age verification system - and how long would it take to roll it out?
Asking because it feels like the Titanic has sunk, and we're eschewing a floating door because the coast guard has regulation conformant life rafts that would work better.
> United States to implement a reliable ZKP age verification system
(my emphesis)
Realistically at least 3-4 years, assuming they want to keep the same goals as eIDAS. I think the (software) implementation will be the least costly part, time-wise; but it takes a long time before everyone adopts a new social system. Especially in the US where there has been no precedent for digital identification. Even with full control of your own ID & and solid implementation details, there will be push-back just for suggesting that people/companies should adopt it.
Can you elaborate on how the risk of ironbank and hornpub colluding by de-anonymizing you via rainbow tables or IP forensics is substantially greater than Chase and PornHub using - Google Marketing?
It isn't, but due to bureaucracy, when designing a solution, it's that solution that has to be "secure" without really considering that the current outside situation is already insecure..
Anyway I'm not advocating for this solution, just addressing the question directly.
Further tangent, I'm not big on digital ID and stuff overall but then I'll play an online game with cheaters and wonder if it's not the solution to things like this. Lifetime cross platform online game bans tied to your real life ID which you need to sign into this new all encompassing anticheat.
I don't think that anything should be as harsh ever but yes, having a reputation that goes everywhere with you is how we deal with problematic people in real life. That's how we stay civil without AI systems constantly scan us or some type of police constantly watching. Also, we tend to tolerate, forgive and eventually forget when someones behavior improves, so... Maybe actually having a continuous persona can help with the nihilistic tendencies too?
False positives aren't exactly rare. Cheaters trolled PunkBuster's memory scans by sending offending payloads matching blacklisted signatures over popular IRC channels, less recently they exploited an RCE vulnerability to deploy cheats to other players computers, mid-game. AMD released drivers hooking themselves into games processes, triggering detections. And there's a lot of less obvious problems with this approach.
So in order to be a part of European society I need to accept the terms and conditions of US companies?
What happens if something goes wrong and you have to rely on contacting a human in Google of all places? Sorry, you have a copyright strike on your YouTube account, now you can't file taxes! Hopefully you have enough followers on Twitter than you can get them to pay attention.
My experience with digitalisation is that the optional physical service desks quickly start disappearing once the younger generations start using digital equivalents.
Card payments and digital banking have closed most bank offices outside the larger cities. Mail dropoff boxes are slowly dying out. Paper bank invoices now cost extra (an unreasonable amount extra).
Granny may be able to verify her age, but the service desk won't necessarily be local.
When the UK age verification legislation was being debated I recall people saying "don't worry about unintended consequences, it's not like you'll be have to show your ID to random websites! Someone will show up with a reasonable methodology. You'll be able to e.g. show your ID at a shop and get an anonymous token.".
And plenty of people, including myself, thought "this is so dystopian it couldn't possibly happen".
It did happen, and it's as bad as the doomsayers said it would be.
While I agree EU is nothing like USSR, calling it a market economy is kind of questionable. It’s a bit of a hybrid, which companies allowed to market and sell on their own but with intense regulatory control over product design.
From USBC to ad supported business models, the EU has fairly tight control over how products are designed and monetized, in a way that I don’t think can be described as a pure market economy.
Note that I’m NOT saying their level of centralized control and government specification of product requirements is bad. It’s a legit trade off and there are arguments that some or all of it is enlightened. But it’s certainly not a place where you just build your product and ship it and let the market decide.
since when a market economy need to have no regulation?
Market economies are contrasted with planned economies, i.e. how prices are determined and production allocated, and the EU most decidedly is not that.
Well, obviously there are differences, but some overreaching and, I believe, unrealistic policies, such as the EU's climate policies, are somewhat reminiscent of the Soviet Union's central planning.
Russia is a one way step ahead here, with mandatory pre-installed apps, full-scale internet censorship (still catching up with China, though), mandatory DPI, etc.
this was the case in portugal too, although i don't know if it still is since gov apps have been pushed to the apple and google stores. edit: it should still work according to this https://www.autenticacao.gov.pt/cartao-cidadao/autenticacao
Gov app uses the "Chave Móvel Digital", which can be used in the browser, as well as in a variety of mobile apps. This CMD can also be used to digitally sign documents.
I believe it's still possible to use the physical card with a reader for many things.
I think some services still don't work with the CMD. Recently, I had to ask for changes to my car's document, and it seems it's only possible with the card itself. (https://www.automovelonline.mj.pt/AutoOnlineProd/)
It seems very reasonable to me for a first version of a system to only support the most popular platforms. Especially since this is open source, nothing stops enthusiasts to port the mechanisms to more niche platforms later.
Lets pretend the EU would mandate Desktop Support, we all know it will be only applied to Windows and Apple. Maybe for Linux, BSD it will never be applied.
In anycase we all know ways of bypassing this age verification will be found, probably by the kids themselves. But all this will do is enable US big tech, killing the very EU based companies the EU has been crying about for years.
Meta, Twitter, Google and M/S could not have created a better law to protect them then this law.
Looking forward to this becoming the norm in the US at some point around the time I retire from the tech sector to go farm. I will take a nice boat ride into the ocean and throw my phone into a particulary deep spot.
A lot of people outraged by this but ultimately this is good news - the more flagrant & public the technical incompetence of the people putting together these idiotic systems, the easier mass push back will be to foment.
VPN will maybe work for porn but, as they say, "Age verification plays a crucial role across various scenarios, including access to online services, purchases of age-restricted products and claiming age-related benefits."
The tldr is that they have a legal requirement to bind "verifiable credential shares" with the same human who got the e-ID originally, up to the current best practical technology. On Android, they judge that to be "keep the private key in the HSM and require a local biometric (or PIN) unlock to use it". This is why they argue that proving your age will not be possible without a mobile device.
You can prove your age anonymously, for anonymous account, which can be used on a non-mobile device. It's just that the proving the age part must happen from a mobile device.
À propos of more or less nothing: in the Swiss context, websites requesting the proof will be required to request the least information necessary for their need. They must NOT ask for your name, ID number, or birthdate if the question they are trying to answer is, "is this person old enough for our service?"
This is excellent technology, and the Swiss law on it that we are voting for next weekend is an excellent law, so I urge a OUI/JA/SI vote on it, if you're a Swiss citizen.
At this point I think they very well do understand. Rocky times are ahead, TPTB know they're at risk if things get bad enough for the average denizen and they want to get in as much leverage against future dissidents as possible.
- this project is just one implementation (POC if you want)
- they simply state the current scope of the project
For anyone sane managing projects it makes sense to correctly allocate resources that would cover the most people.
and to all those whining butthurt individuals here - reality check is that it's way more probable that someone has and uses a smartphone than a computer. go out of your tiny bubbles...
> At present the project is focused on mobile platforms, specifically Android and iOS, as they cover the vast majority of users and real-world use cases. (..) Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope.
This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale.
At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is increasing though, which worries me a lot, and day after day there is a new attempt to shove it down your throat if you want to be considered a member of society. Seeing that a lot of countries (including mine) are pushing for age verification, and the whole thing about Android blocking 'sideload', by the end of 2026 you won't be considered a human being without a government certified smartphone.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly10r6m_-n8
I do find it interesting that in an attempt to bring more people into modern society (via ability to access everything from an inexpensive smartphone), we're creating a stratification in society.
My brother hates tech more than me, and only has an old flip phone. I'm always surprised by the random problems he runs into as a result. Unresponsive desktop sites that beg you to download apps are the worst.
Another recent news about mandated app use: Ryanair now (from November) requires using their app for the boarding pass, no more printouts from the desktop. If you have no smartphone or its battery has run out, then that's your fault. Also, they refuse to show the QR code for the boarding pass in a mobile browser via the website, you must use their app.
https://www.msn.com/en-ie/travel/news/ryanair-s-new-check-in...
Big difference between a private company mandating app use, and a government
I disagree. It's a tandem, and corporations and the government are increasingly welded together.
Also, I'm not too worried about the airport usecase as we're already being tracked and surveilled and inspected there as much as possible.
But it's another step to normalize and mandate phone and app use. The puzzle pieces are falling in place. Soon, AI could screen-capture your phone screen to detect suspicious activity, and track every tap you do, also taking pictures with the front-facing camera without you knowing, listening on the mic, etc. etc., connecting it all to your real identity. Because why not? If it's done step by step, nobody will care at all. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, but it looks like the end game and I see no principled political stance against it, nor any insurmountable technical hurdles.
This is good I think because lack of verifications anywhere is good. So at least desktops will be free of it.
Worse: You just won't be able to use websites on desktop unless you pull out your phone and verify.
But this will at least create a healthy pressure for competing options for users on desktops, likely based on novel secure protocols.
This is a great example of how this whole requirement hasn't been properly thought out.
> Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope.
What I would like to take from this is that, by their own definition, desktop apps are out of scope for Age Verification. So does that mean we will see a return of the 'desktop applications' instead of everything being a web service ?
One can dream perhaps. Until then adults who are willing to 'do what they're told' will be the ones who are inconvenienced by this constantly.
Edit: Also this will completely disable any new phone OS' being developed. Why would anyone bother when you can't verify your wallet to do anything online.
> Also this will completely disable any new phone OS' being developed. Why would anyone bother when you can't verify your wallet to do anything online.
This already the case today, you can't run your bank's app or government eID apps on anything but Google or Apple devices.
> you can't run your bank's app
I can log in to my bank account using my desktop PC
> government eID apps
I can sign into government websites using my desktop PC and its smart card reader and my government-issued eID smartcard. No smartphone needed.
Not in EU. Many banks mandate you either have an iPhone or Google approved Android as 2FA. Those fucking idiots have killed their own competition options.
While everyone took the opportunity to reply to you with "Not in my bank/country/to-my-awareness" This is what's happening in Portugal:
https://old.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/1msc886/obriga%C3...
Effectively, if the client doesn't download the App, they will never be able to log into the homebanking website again. The bank enforced this and now if you login normally it will redirect to a page where you can download the app or use up one of three remaining chances to login. I am down to two. From now on, I'm only able to use ATM's or go to an actual teller to make payments and such. The app requires that I have a Google account or an Apple account and I think that's just messed up, specially for a Portuguese bank.
The app on the google store is pt.novobanco.nbsmarter if anyone is curious. It has interesting permissions as well.
Edit: This is the landing page (one login left, oh dear...) https://files.catbox.moe/x117iy.png
My bank (in the EU) has a fully functional website where I can identify myself using an offline 2fa device.
Which banks? Which country? How do they check and enforce iPhone / Google wrt. 2FA? Are you referring to TOTP as 2FA?
All of them now require some kind of 2FA, everywhere. This is due to a legal requirement on all EEA payment providers that they require 2FA for almost everything since 2020, including accessing your account on their website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_customer_authentication
TOTP codes would be allowed by the regulation, as would biometric approaches or separate physical tokens, but in practice every bank I've used in recent years (quite a few, mostly Spanish but also in Belgium & Switzerland) require that you accept a confirmation prompt or similar in their app.
Yes in EU. I'm in Spain and I sign up to several banks as well as government sites in my desktop PC.
>Not in EU.
Please stop spreading disinformation. I live in the EU and my EU bank supports desktop browsers + Card reader matching everything the mobile app can do.
Of course in the EU - pretty much all Baltic and Nordic countries support id cards connected via usb
Well not in Germany. Some banks accept their branded authenticators, some of them don't.
ING in Germany forces you to either have a single Google approved smartphone or a single authenticator, not both.
DKB requires a paid Girocard to use the authenticator or a Google approved smartphone.
N26 requires a single phone but they are a bit lenient. However they have way too many incidents reported where they closed people's accounts without a reason.
The traditional banks have high fees. One pays upwards 10 - 15 Euros a month for Sparkasse or Commerzbank for a simple checking account. Using Sparkasse means you cannot deposit money outside county (yes county and country) borders. Many traditional banks have high fees for withdrawing outside the network.
So one is forced to choose between modern banks with better online experience that's tied to Google and Apple or a traditional bank with oftentimes awful online experience and high fees.
My German bank started to require an Android or IOS smartphone [0]. No dedicated HW, no desktop. I actually dumped my well working Xiaomi Phone because it was either security or banking.
[0] https://www.1822direkt.de/service/fragen-und-antworten/detai...
Nope, Sweden requires Mobile BankID on iOS or Android for example.
BankID has a desktop version, and no site which requires Mobile BankID would not allow you to also use the desktop version.
But it doesn't support Linux.
That’s what competition is for. You can still swap banks over such nonsense.
Likewise in Sweden. No bank that I’m aware of is limited to require mobile only login.
Some neobanks are limited to mobile-only. The OP's statement was too general. It's also true that some regular banks are phasing out 2FA via SMS, which is outdated per EU regulations, and may not easily offer alternatives to their app for 2FA codes.
For now, there is an increasing number of banks and government websites that are broken if you are not using Chrome or full on requires it.
This has been true since it stopped being true for Internet Explorer. I've not noticed any significant change over time. I have been using Firefox for over 20 years.
True. But it doesn't _need_ to be so, it's actually a problem.
True, but there are alternatives to using these services, though a bit more inconvenient. What will be the alternative to the age verification mobile app?
Back when Microsoft said they were going to let Android apps run on Windows before killing it off for I think the third time, I was excited that I'd be able to run my bank app on my desktop. The app is a simple process to login, but the website has about 50 steps to login making it unappealing to use (probably on purpose).
You can, aith Windows subsystem for Android. Unsurprisingly, it's not going to be supported for much longer.
I get that it wouldn't be optimal but can you run it on an android emulator?
This read more like "we thought pc was a dead relic of the past" sadly
To me it reads that, since many people already believe this is more about tracking than safety, they are focusing on a device which is the perfect surveillance system, and which conveniently already accounts for 7+ hours of many peoples daily computer/internet interaction.
A desktop computer doesn't necessarily have a microphone or camera, and doesn't necessarily have to be connected to the internet. I'd wager most crime, including that which affects children is done on "disconnected devices" in this sense.
you could pretty much replace the statement with "General purpose computing considered harmful"
> "General purpose computing considered harmful"
Even though it sounds like _you_ probably know this, Cory Doctorow has been sounding this alarm for years. As usual, it seems he was right about the possibility of this being a legitimate battlefront in the (actual, non-hyperbolic) war on freedom.
or user 'having free will is problematic and unsafe' if we want to go even deeper :(
I think it's more that smartphones have built in security measures that prevent hacking. It already works for bank apps, so why not use it for government stuff too?
It sucks, yes, but that's probably how these people think.
but if age verification is used for what it claims it is such hacking protections are not only unnecessary but fundamentally harmful (i.e. if a child hacks their PC it's fine if they circumvent age verification, the main responsibility still lies with parents and as such tools like parent controls are much more relevant)
the main reason is that this is not a reference implementations or "this is the app everyone must use" case but a "to see what is technical possible/practical" "research/POV" project
this also makes the "EU age verification app" title quite misleading
> I think it's more that smartphones have built in security measures that prevent hacking.
Which is a joke when you know that most phones in the wild are using an obsolete OS version (most of the time due to lack of software support from the manufacturer, but sometimes because some people just refuse to update because updates are in fact downgrades — looking at you iOS).
Well, looking around I see more people using smartphones for anything and even not having a PC…
I've seen this as well. It's getting increasingly normal, but I cannot imagine doing the same myself.
There's a much bigger likelihood of me going back to a feature-phone, compared to me starting to use my phone for anything but the absolute basics.
I used to use a feature phone and I genuinely didn't miss any of the same things.
my commute is a really long ride and I just don't like using my phone in it.
My dumb phone had music system and sd card (I finally managed to have that sd card fixed after an year of using that dumbphone without even an sd card for music)
I just used to stare into nothingness / surrounding and think. (Yes I have edited it because I didn't used to think, I used to overthink just as I am doing right now lol)
Not that productive, but my current phone is so slow that I can't even tell you guys or start telling you. It takes me 1/2 a minute just to unlock it and the only thing its truly good at is having a music player run and some occasional hackernews or pokemon showdown or youtube scrolling.
But tbh, I don't have any banking apps etc. so to me there isn't thaaat much of a difference. I feel like a macbook is genuinely nice as it has that less friction and a pc is great too as compared to a phone for the most part when I am at home.
My screentime is usually just some shorts that I occassionaly watch on phone when I am extremelyyy bored.
I am sad that my dumb phone was in my bag one day and then it just stopped (working??) , I swear I kinda regret having my dad's old phone. I am not sure how he was even using it.
Same, but I also have other quirks and that doesn't mean this is TheTrueWay and everyone should adapt to it :)
Smartphones are a lot more portable than desktop PCs or even laptops. Unless you enter everyone's home to take an inventory of their devices, it stands to reason that you're going to see more smartphones than anything else by just looking around.
Sure, but computers are a lot more capable. Even for just scrolling sites, a desktop computer is a superior experience.
My partner - he has a computer and it's mostly in the closed.
Most of his friends (non-tech people) use only phone (gathered from visiting them and talking to them).
Please get off of your high-horse and actually try to interact with wider world and not the IT bubble :)
Even if you go to statcounter (https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share#monthly-202...) you can see that mobile easily outweights desktop. And most likely those on desktop have mobile as well.
Those with only desktop would be tiny fraction…
> Please get off of your high-horse and actually try to interact with wider world and not the IT bubble :)
That seems pretty rude and uncalled for, why would you say that to me? Do you think that I don't have friends outside of the "IT bubble" myself, or that I don't have my own spouse who is a non-tech person?
But as long as there are still people using desktop computers, removing access from them is an overreach and makes these ideas totally undemocratic. I am frankly baffled that an organization having the principles and know-how of the EU can even think of gating access to information with something so slipshod.
The only eventuality where this is acceptable is when desktop computers won't even be gated, and then if anyone can circumvent the problem with a computer, why is anyone even bothering with the whole thing...
Are they?
Again - this is only just one of the possible implementations of https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/archit...
It's possible to have others but as POC they are focusing on covering the biggest chunk of the population…
> I am frankly baffled that an organization having the principles and know-how of the EU can even think of gating access to information with something so slipshod.
That doesn't surprise me at all. Principles in a government body don't exist. They are all crooks.
“They are all crooks” is the motto of another kind of personal corruption: the kind where people abdicate any responsibility to detail or distinction for the sheer indulgence of moral posture without any of the work.
Every time someone says “they’re all crooks” they are the enablers of crooks. The crooks couldn’t do it without people like that.
It doesn't surprise me either, because I'd never be able to use a phrase like "the principles and know-how of the EU" with a straight face. (To be fair, you could replace "the EU" with almost any large bureaucracy.)
Sure. But the EU is not just your average bureaucracy. It's an entity that has as one of it's specific goals the following[1]:
> combat social exclusion and discrimination
[1] https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor...
Any large bureaucracy has similarly lofty official goals
I understand we're all old and cynical here, but one of the tenets of discussions on HN would be to take someone's arguments at face value, so I prefer to believe that the EU as an organization actually wants to diminish social exclusion and discrimination. I'm not sure if I'd give the same credit to any other capitalist entity, but the EU does not have the implicit goal of increasing revenue for its shareholders to subvert any of the others stated.
Or rather: "You will need a smartphone to use this desktop app".
> oes that mean we will see a return of the 'desktop applications'...?
No. It's still required by law, which means that your desktop application will require some interaction with your smartphone.
Further forcing everybody to have their phone on person at all times
And as a prerequisite enforcing dependency on titanic (and in my case foreign) tech companies that are free to unilaterally ban you from communicating with your government. This is a BAD idea.
Depending on the implementation, you can run the app on your computer. I don't see why the iOS app wouldn't work on macOS, and there are tons of tools to run Android apps on Windows and Linux.
If the actual implementations do copy the dependency on Play Integrity and other such APIs, that does become a problem (getting past that is a major annoyance on amd64 computers because there are so few real amd64 Android devices that can be spoofed).
However, the law regarding these apps specifically states that the use of this app must be optional. I'm not sure websites and services will implement other solutions, but in theory you should not need a phone unless you want the convenience and privacy factor of app verification. I expect alternatives (such as 1 cent payments with credit cards in your name) to stick around, at least until we get a better idea about how this thing will work out in practice.
Waydroid on linux comes to mind. It sort of semi worked out of the box on archlinux but I can't try to imagine setting up somewhere else..
Wait a minute, while writing this comment, I realized that there was a guy who sort of packaged waydroid into flatpak-ish to run android apps in flatpak.
https://flathub.org/en/apps/net.newpipe.NewPipe
(It uses android translation layer??)
I am not an EU citizen but if somebody is & they want this age verification app on desktop, maybe the best way might be to support this android translation layer to convert this EU app into something that can run through flatpak and then use linux I suppose.
I mean, some of y'all are so talented that I feel like surely someone would do it if things do go this way! So not too much to be worried about I suppose :>
I've been saying this for years: eventually not having your phone on you and powered up at all times will not be a crime, but it will be grounds for questioning and search.
One day, there will be a knock on your door.
"Good morning, this is the police. Is there something wrong with your phone? Is your phone broken? Can we provide you with a charge?"
"No, I must have turned it off accidentally."
"Can we assist you with an upgrade? The newer models don't have power buttons."
According to Mallen Baker, this is already happening in 9 countries. https://youtu.be/0zlDVM1x8P4?t=228
I think you're exactly right, and the groundwork is being laid today by the standards society is setting for everybody. People will assume a lack of phone or the presence of a phone but lack of usage / content on it, makes you guilty of some sort of crime similar to owning a burner phone.
Tell somebody you use your phone less than 10 minutes a day and look at their face change.
> Tell somebody you use your phone less than 10 minutes a day and look at their face change.
While not less than 10 minutes per day for me, but I was having this argument on reddit over the iPhone Air - people couldn't fathom that there's someone out there that is not on their phone 24/7, and doesn't use their phone as their main computing device.
I clock in at under an hour screen time most days. It's the least ergonomic device for me to do anything remotely serious. Can't even stand typing on a virtual keyboard. My laptop is, and will remain, my main interface to the net and communication with others.
You'd think I was some kind of weird hermit luddite because of it.
Black Mirror "The entire history of you" now in mobile app version.
The Pedestrian: https://xpressenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/Stories/The-Ped...
So... 1984?
What does seem to be happening is rather that the assumption of having a phone will be built into every little thing - in particular mobile payments are becoming mandatory in some places. Transportation including parking is sometimes locked behind an app. We could also see stuff like landlords moving to smart locks that a tenant open with their phone.
Since children are universally not considered real people with real rights schools requiring them to have the right apps to perform their schoolwork are to be expected.
My EU country allows tapping the ID card on a NFC reader on PC for verification. No smartphone needed for desktop use.
Why wouldn't that be sufficient?
Don't worry, that feature will inevitably be phased out because only a small percentage of people use it.
Every new secure government identification/authentication/verification thing will try to 'just' use Android/IOS, because 'everyone' has one those smartphones.
Most PCs don't have NFC readers.
Cool, but that's the fallback they offer for folks who can't use the mobile app and it works just fine.
No reason that couldn't change. China should give good bulk discounts on 300M units /s
The wallet app can be started using a QR code. You can then finish the verification on your phone and continue on the desktop website/app/whatever.
What if you don't have a phone? Or what if your phone runs a custom rom and can't pass google's attlestation?
"Google, google everywhere. It's attestation is gonna be a nightmare."
Idk I created this just right now lol.
But on a serious note, Maybe check out my comment on something known as the android_translation_layer with flatpak to see if that might help to run that app atleast in linux.
Linking it here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45361397
If you don't have a phone, you cannot create a new Google or Vk (social network) account today. I expect there will be more things you won't be able to do if you don't want to leak your information.
Then you can't use this method of identification, just like you can't use it now. Surely it won't be the only way to identify yourself online. If this provides a frictionless way to do this for 95% of people then it's already a huge win.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
No, this is worse because it solidifies Apple/Google's duopoly over the smart phone market even more than it already is.
Not only that, but having this locked behind something that works for 95% of users means the other 5% will never have enough leverage for any other implementations to be approved. Which is absolutely unacceptable for such an essential feature like age verification.
Why can't we continue with an open web standard? We should have complete interoperability regardless of whether I'm using a google smartphone or a custom os I wrote in my garage or bsd or nixos. That is the entire point of web standards: to create the ability to communicate with one-another regardless of system design, so long as standards are properly implemented.
This is a general computing crisis.
The requirement for age id is already stupid.
The target, which are the children who access "forbidden" websites without authorization is likely to be lower than amount of people who won't be able to access due to those narrow specs.
This is plain stupid. Countries (e.g. where I live) already have systems like SPID or CIE that can authenticate users using a multitude of factors, for example I can authenticate myself with a QR and a phone, or I can not even have a phone at all and have a 20 euros NFC reader connected to the PC and can authenticate using my digital document and a PIN.
I see this as a huge stepback to be fair.
How can I do this when I don't have a phone?
Don't you people have phones?
Edit: Sorry that reference was a deep cut, I was quoting the devs of that awful Diablo mobile game way back.
No? I had been with dumb phone for almost a year from like 2024-25? What point are you trying to make as I think that there are some good dumb phones in the market which even support things like signal.
I used to use the messaging app through SMS tho, the people that knew me (that 1 friend gets a shoutout here who used to msg me through SMS in the world of whatsapp and my mom!!)
Most phones are used for two things that my father used to quote: Whatsapp (messaging app) and youtube(social media)
Entertainment could somewhat be offloaded via music player etc. into dumb phones and to be really honest, I think that even things like hackernews could be operated on those dumb phones if given the ability to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdYrBpBJRI4 : this is the dumbphone which supports signal btw. Wish there was a way to make app for dumbphones like these just as how we can make apps for androids.
I was shocked by how much feature packed my chinese dumb phone was for 11.27$ lol. It just didn't have internet & yeah games as well.
A phone isn't enough, you need an Apple or Google account as well. So if your Google account gets banned, you might as well just jump of a bridge because it's over for you.
That is easy to solve though. If Apple/Google become essentially an utility, they are legally mandated to provide an account for any EU citizen =)
For what it's worth, I chortled.
App not available doesn't mean age verification not required. You can be required to confirm your account from your mobile phone or scan some QR code on mobile that will take you to age verification session and once completed you can continue from the desktop.
I mean, otherwise would be like not being bound to speed limits if you don't have a speedometer.
>I mean, otherwise would be like not being bound to speed limits if you don't have a speedometer.
That only works in a world in which the government provides speedometers, which restrict the vehicle automatically, and in this case they refuse to provide them at all for blue cars.
So a loss of mobile phone will mean loss of everything? Maybe we should just kill people if they lose a portable mobile device which can just stop working by itself? I fully expect there to be some idiotic scenarios where to get x, you need to already have x.
Be as much work as possible in all places, where the default option is to do something with your mobile phone. If enough people do that, then the alternative to using your phone will need to have good process, so that it is not holding up everyone else.
If something doesn't work without your phone, report it being broken. If they tell you to use your phone, tell them you don't have one. If possible, leave their service, if they don't care.
We have to make it their issue as much as possible, when they try to push their shit onto us.
Surprisingly often there is a workable alternative to using ones smart phone. We have to make use of those as much as possible, so that the cost for them to get rid of those options will be high and they think twice before doing that and offending us.
They will terrorize us like that and then, they will use implanted chips. One primary one backup. It is extremely rare to lose both. Possibly the primary will be in your head.
Why would loss of a mobile phone be that dramatic? Go buy a new one? Having the equipment in something that requires an equipment is pretty reasonable when the price range is within the reach of everybody.
> What I would like to take from this is that, by their own definition, desktop apps are out of scope for Age Verification. So does that mean we will see a return of the 'desktop applications' instead of everything being a web service ?
I doubt it unless something odd happens like triggering some reaction. They’ve looked at the data and see the majority of society using “phones”, which are really just increasingly small computers that happen to have a feature to also make calls; and they’ve decided that this trap they’re leading us all into can and may even need to stay open and inviting for a while anyways until the older people die off and desktop form factors kind of fall by the wayside, before the trap is even ready to be sprung. In the mean time they’ll just gaslight and lie about what they’re doing, to save and protect the children of course, until the day that you tune around from a distraction and the trap door is shut behind you.
It’s the same MO as always, with the gullible and naive enablers being essentially the worse threat than the actual perpetrators.
Just wait until kids figure out you can run an emulator for an older desktop platform on a modern phone with ease
I've posted this as a response but I'll post it again since it seems like a lot of people are confused about the project:
This project is not THE digital wallet, it is an early prototype of the wallet (which can be criticized for what it is, but the issue is somewhat orthogonal).
The actual infrastructure is not based on attenstation, if you read the guidelines (or the readme) they actually want to implement a double-blind approach with ZKPs, which imo is significantly better than a challenge-response pub key system in term of privacy as some suggested. And allows for cross-platform (and in theory hardware) support.
If you're not familiar this would mean the verifier doesn't learn anything except a statement about attributes (age, license, etc); and the EU doesn't learn what attributes have been tried to verify or by who.
> a lot of people are confused about the project
This is misleading. They are merely exploring options that may allow for issuer unlinkability, but they are actually implementing a linkable solution based on standard cryptography that allows issuers (member state governments) to collude with any verifier (a website requiring age verification) to de-anonymize users. The solution is linkable because both the issuer and the verifier see the same identifiers (the SD-JWT and its signature).
The project is supposed to prove that age verification is viable so that the Commission can use it as a success story, while it completely disregards privacy by design principles in its implementation. That the project intends to perhaps at some point implement privacy enhancing technologies doesn't make it any better. Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.
It will also be trivial to circumvent [1], potentially leading to a cycle of obfuscation and weakening of privacy features that are present in the current issuer linkable design.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44458323
> This is misleading. They are merely exploring options that may allow for issuer unlinkability, but they are actually implementing a linkable solution based on standard ECDSA..
The repository we're commenting on has the following in the spec[0]: "A next version of the Technical Specifications for Age Verification Solutions will include as an experimental feature the Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP)". So given that the current spec is not in use, this seems incorrect.
> It will also be trivial to circumvent
If you have a key with the attribute of course you can 'bypass' it, I don't think that's bug. The statement required should be scaled to the application it's used for; this is "over-asking" is considered in the law[1].
> The project is supposed to prove that age verification is viable, while it completely disregards privacy by design principles in its implementation. That the project intends to perhaps at some point implement privacy enhancing technologies doesn't make it any better.
I agree that in it's current state it is effectively unusable due to the ZKPs being omitted.
[0]: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic... [1]: https://youtu.be/PKtklN8mOo0?si=bbqtzMhIK7cFLh6S&t=375
> So given that the current spec is not in use, this seems incorrect.
No, that's not what they mean. They just mean that the spec (and for now only the spec, not the implementation) will be amended with an experimental feature, while the implementation will not (yet).
I understand (?) that you are interpreting this as: "we'll later document something that we've already implemented", but this is not the case. That isn't how this project operates, and I'm intimately familiar with the codebase so I'm completely certain they haven't implemented this at all. There is no beginning or even a stub for this feature to land, which is problematic, as an unlinkable signature scheme isn't just a drop-in replacement, but requires careful design. Hence privacy by design.
> If you have a key with the attribute of course you can 'bypass' it, I don't think that's bug.
Anyone of age can make an anonymous age attribute faucet [1] for anyone to use. That it's not technically a bug doesn't make it any less trivial to circumvent. I wouldn't expect the public or even the Commission to make such a distinction. They'll clamor that the solution is broken and that it must be fixed, and at that point I expect the obfuscation and weakening of privacy features to start.
So as we already know that the solution will be trivial to circumvent, it shouldn't be released without at least very clearly and publicly announcing it's limitations. Only if such expectations are correctly set, we have a chance not to end up in a cycle where the open source and privacy story will be abandoned in the name of security.
[1] Because of the linkable signature scheme in principle misuse can be detected by issuers, but this would be in direct contradiction with their privacy claims (namely that the issuer pinky promises not to record any issued credentials or signatures).
Thanks for chiming in! Is there some documentation on the Zero-Knowledge-Proof, that this app is supposed to use?
I don't know the specific ZKP variant if that's what you mean, but the general architecture of the system is best described in the 38C3 talk from earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKtklN8mOo0
There are some choices that are debatable (more on the issuer side iirc), but imho for the goals it has it's a competently made architecture.
> This project is not THE digital wallet, it is the wallet
...what?
GP has edited the comment to make more sense
This is hardware attestation in a nutshell: a double edged sword, and a sharp one at that.
The biggest issue is that the attestation hardware and the application client is the same device with the same manufacturer, who also happens to have a slight conflict of interest between monetizing customers and preserving any sort of privacy.
IMHO the pro-attestation forces are so overwhelming that we should all cherish the moment while we have anything open left.
My understanding of the "double edged sword" idiom is that the tool has both downsides and upsides. What are the upsides to restricting what I can do with the hardware I paid for?
The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
That seems completely contrary to the spirit of EU laws and regulations, which tend to be about protecting the consumer, preventing monopolies, ensuring people can generally live their lives where all things that are mandatory are owned and ran by the state and foster a certain degree of EU independence, with a recent focus on "digital sovereignty".
This one is a five for one against all of those goals? Harms the customer (you could see this as the polar opposite of GDPR), strengthens entrenched monopolies, force citizens to be serfs of one of two private corporations in order to access information, and on top of that, like it wasn't enough, willingly capitulates to the US as the arbitrates of who is a valid person or not.
This is so against the spirit of the EU itself that it would almost be funny if people weren't serious.
> The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
Please (kindly) ask Paolo De Rosa [1], Policy Officer at the European Commission and driver of many of the decisions behind the wallet and the ARF. His position is one of fatalism: that it's "too late"; the duopoly of Goople is entrenched, and it's therefore not a problem if the wallet project entrenches it even further. Regrettably quite a lot of member states agree, although representatives of France and Germany specifically are frequently standing up to the fatalism.
[1] https://github.com/paolo-de-rosa
> The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
Because the EU doesn't actually care about privacy, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to do this and ChatControl. They care about being the main ones to spy on you, and maybe using fines as additional "taxes" on rich foreign companies. That's it.
The app this discussion is about is a reference implementation that is part of a long-term process for building a digital identity app. Specifically, this discussion is about the age verification part of the app, which is the first part expected to be finished but is also only a small part of a much wider ideal.
Europe's dependence on American tech is a major pain point but realistically, there are only two smartphone vendors. If a European vendor does rise up, I'm sure whatever app comes out of this process will happily hook into the hardware attestation API for that OS as well.
https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet
This "identity wallet" is such a hostile idea, require identification for everything instead of thinking about how to remove identification (for example, allow anonymous banking, traveling).
But you could do attestation on GrapheneOS, no need to require the users to have Google spyware preinstalled. Google is abusing its position here, attestation should be to verify the security model, not Google's business model..
Attestation is fundamentally incompatible with software freedom.
When scoped to attest the full software stack down to the kernel, yes, because it takes control away from the general purpose computing device that the user supposedly owns. I don't however have a problem with attestation scoped to dedicated hardware security devices such as Yubi Keys.
And if such dedicated hardware is ever required by the law, the manufacturer should be prohibited from bundling any business-related functionality there (such as displaying ads) that can't be turned off without breaking the certification.
Google's ad business model should never be mandated by law, unfortunately lawmakers seem to be unaware that this is what requiring Play Integrity effectively means.
Take any group of a hundred tech people (devs, analysts, architects, etc.), and 95 of them will do everything with their stock Android or IOS smartphone. Maybe 3 will consciously limit their use of that device, and the remaining 2 reluctantly use something sane like GrapheneOS. Those two might pipe up and take a stand for people without smartphones (which includes a very varied swath of people, from Luddites to people with disabilities), but they'll get drowned out by sighs, sheepish looks, and the chorus of 'let's just start with those two smartphone OSes, and if after a year or two people still really need something else, a new project can be started to address that'.
It's not an insane question, it just doesn't get asked.
> The insane question here is, why would the EU mandate hardware attestation controlled by two private American companies in order to access services?
Because this is being pushed by lobbyists to use hardware attestation to make it piratically mandatory for every citizen in the EU to be registered to either Apple or Google with a real id for all non-trivial online interactions at all times. The people behind this push neither have the technical knowledge nor care in the slightest that this is the consequence.
>piratically mandatory
I am stealing this typo.
Do you believe they care for EU? The driving forces are other.
This could be a boon to all sorts of new kind of hardware though (wishful-thinking mode)
How does private access token (PAT) compromise privacy in the name of monetization?
I finally took a look at the DSA, and it only mentions anything relevant to age verification in three places:
- Recital 71, which vaguely suggests minors' privacy and security should be extra-protected, but says that services shouldn't process extra personal data to identify them.
- Article 28, which says that platforms should provide a high level of "privacy, safety, and security of minors", again without processing extra personal data to identify them. It also says that the Commision may "issue guidelines", but says nothing suggesting age verification should be implemented.
- Article 35, which says that "large online platforms" should maybe implement age verification.
Furthermore, recital 57 says that the regulations for online platforms shouldn't apply to micro/small enterprises (which has a definition somewhere). All together, I don't see anything suggesting that anyone but the largest online services is being forced to implement age verification right now.
Judging by various posts by the Commision I've seen online, they're certainly pushing for the situation to be seen this way, but de iure, that's currently not happening.
EDIT: I found the guidelines mentioned [0], and a nice commentary on the age verification parts [1].
[0]: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-... [1]: https://dsa-observatory.eu/2025/07/31/do-the-dsa-guidelines-...
The digital identity wallet isn't part of the DSA; it is part of an effort to bring identity to your phone, basically: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
If implemented according to plan, things like ID cards, drivers' licenses, diplomas, train tickets, and even payment control can be handled within such apps entirely digitally. Aside from age verification, with attribute based authentication you can prove digitally that you're permitted to drive a certain vehicle without revealing your social security number (equivalent).
A healthy dose of cynicism would make clear that the moment such optional infrastructure is rolled out, new legislation can be drafted to "save on expenses" by enforcing this digital model and "protect the kids/fight the terrorists" by forcing age verification on more businesses.
> Aside from age verification, with attribute based authentication you can prove digitally that you're permitted to drive a certain vehicle without revealing your social security number (equivalent).
That doesn't make sense because the government knows about every vehicle and its owner and his social security number and there is no point to hide it. I think you misunderstood something or I misunderstood your comment.
The goal of "bringing identity to your phone" is making identification easier to require it in more cases so that the government knows better what its citizens do. One thing if you are required to fill a 20 fields form to buy a bicycle and another thing if you need just to tap your phone at the cash register.
> can be handled within such apps entirely digitally.
_Can_ be handled? So you could still just use traditional physical, paper IDs?
Yes, but this isn't part of the digital wallet project. As I understand it, the Commision was so impatient with age-verification that they commissioned this project separately, because they didn't want to wait for the full solution, hence it being called a "mini-ID wallet".
I'm certainly not against vigilance and making sure no new laws mandating the use of either this or the full digital wallet sneak through, but my point is that, despite the Commision's misleading public stance, age verification is (mostly) not mandatory today.
That's true, but as this is only a small part of the larger project, it's also targeting a very specific part of legislation.
The README for the age verification spec specifically calls out article 28 of the DSA and the Louvain-la-Neuve Declaration. Neither is aiming to be the mandated age verification mechanism for every single website, but rather a specific tool to solve a specific problem: age limits on social media and big tech websites.
If, or, seeing Denmark's recent bullshit: when, we do get mandatory age requirements, it'll be part of new legislation that will likely take years to go into effect, and, seeing how long it took websites to comply with the GDPR, will start affecting most websites even later. This isn't the doomsday law that I would've expected to come from the US if they were to write something like this, and using privacy-first cryptography does give me some faint hope that this isn't just a big performance to hide malicious intent. This could've been as bad as eIDAS 2.0 with the QACs and other unreasonable technical requirements.
I think the title "EU age verification app not planning desktop support" is misleading because it gives the impression that there will be no way to support EU age verification on the desktop.
This is addressed in the comments:
> It should also be noted that this project is an example of a solution that is considered to meet certain requirements of the DSA, regarding the protection of minors. It does not prevent the use of other solutions that also meet those requirements.
So I think a better title might be "EU age verification example app not planning desktop support"
(don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of how this is implemented, but it's important to be accurate in our critique)
Well, in the end there may only be one thing left we can collectively do, but which we surely won't collectively do, because too many of us are way too comfortable to accept any discomforts: We can avoid using services implementing shit, so that any business that singles out desktop users or disadvantages them, doesn't have much of a customer base. Voting with out feet.
I have very little hope, that the common user will make use of their own agency avoiding a dystopia, or even think about issues associated with their behavior. We can see this everywhere even today. The majority of people are clueless and just accept whatever bone is thrown their way. Need to buy a new phone every year now? OK. Pressured to accept digital surveillance by not even state agencies but private profit oriented companies, that want to sell your data or use it for nefarious purposes? OK. Giving all your communication data to big tech? OK. ... It is all just a big "auto-accept any digital rape" for most people, as they don't even want to think about the technical implications and implications for society. It's all so far above their technological understanding, that they just exit the bus, when it comes to discussing these things. That is the problem we face. How to make the normal person aware and interested in their own digital rights.
Unless you can show a direct cause-and-effect relationship from clicking OK on some form to something negative happening in their real life that impacts them in actual physical real life, a real event at a particular time that they can observe with their eyes that relates to their real life (family, job, social life, going about their day), most people won't care. Otherwise it all blurs to some abstract words and theoretical tinfoil-like worries about the "government" and ufos and sovereign citizens.
We have to assume this is only the first step. The next step will be mandatory identity attestation for everything and your only choices will be to either accept it or not use any services at all.
Depressingly this feels like a long lost battle. I suspect internet freedoms will continue to be eroded and by the time most people care enough it’ll be too late.
My optimistic brain is hopeful for federated services to become the norm and stand up to this kind of crap.
I fear it is already too late, thanks to the phone duopoly and bulletproof secure boot environments. The EU can now make remote attestation mandatory by law.
Tin foil hat time: this is why Google is pushing to kill app sideloading.
Mobile phones are the only platform at the moment that can reasonably be used to enforce mandatory software installs and remote attestation. Removing sideloading can down the road leading to Google (or Apple for IOS) forcing all app store provided apps/browsers to support government authentication APIs like this.
"This makes the web unusable for anyone who wants to browse the web privately."
This is not an accident. This is intent. Look at the arrests for social media posts in the UK and Germany.
And Hungary
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2020/05/14/hungary-critic...
Only available on Android and ios, only installable from Google and Apple App stores (in practice now, but completely when Google tightens control). So much for digital sovereignty.
This is outrageous and doesn't make sense
It makes total sense. The whole point is to punish self-respecting people who use freedom preserving operating systems and treat them as second class citizens.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44704645
Depends on whom you ask. Google introducing the developer verification and sideloading on iOS being even bigger hurdle, they want to stay in control on what you use and they want to make sure you don't have possibility to use anything they explicitly permit. Normal desktop is unfortunately too open for that. Discourage people to use desktops and make rely on controlled gardens even more.
This post is misleading.
The project is just an example.
It does not mean there will not be support for other ways of verification.
Arguing with some random developer contracted by European Commission to make example code for mobile devices is not a political solution
Exactly
what if i were to buy a linux phone? it's not even about desktop support, it's about supporting iOS or android and nothing else which is really bad
Most of what the EU does these days is (knowingly or not) freezing the current status quo regarding the tech world. It’s depressing.
And Europeans are either too passive, too ignorant or too focused on the wrong issues.
Do you want desktop PC vendors locking down hardware to enforce integrity?
Want do you think Windows 11, latest macOS, ChromeOS hardware requirements are all about?
CoPilot+ PCs even require the same security chip as XBox and Azure Sphere IoT board (Pluton), in addition to TPM 2.0.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-...
Well, yeah. There’s no way to curb the modern cheating epidemic without increasing security measures. Riot Games via Valorant truly pushed the industry so far ahead by reducing their cheating percentages so low that the cost to cheat for more than a few weeks at a time is thousands of dollars a month.
It’s not the sole reason, but it’s a solid one.
They have some other secret sauce for sure, there's tons of cheaters on console which is a vastly more locked down platform compared to pc.
I don't want integrity on my mobile so why would I want it on my desktop?
Exactly, remote attestation is only acceptable on your own devices with remote attestation servers that you control.
For example, it would be completely fine to implement remote attestation where devices issued by companies to employees verify their TPM values with company's servers when connecting via VPN.
All other such activities directly infringe on ownership rights.
I don't see the value of remote attestation period. Especially when we talk about the mobile world which is a jungle where even the manufacturer itself doesn't have the full picture of all the code running on the device.
Yeah sure it's guarantees that the device is more or less similar as from the factory... and then what? What am I supposed to do with that information?
It can be valuable on devices *you own* with servers *you own* when the devices are not physically present (or even if they are).
You can get PCR values and decide if the device you are talking to is tampered with. That way, you can set a higher bar for hackers.
This is completely different to what this topic is about, I'm just saying that there is a case where it can be useful.
This is insane. USA is already pushing sanctions against Europeans via US companies (e.g. Microsoft revoking ICC accounts), and now they are about to tie basic functioning in the society to two US megacorporations. At the very least this will solidify the duopoly.
At this point I don't find it impossible that critics or other "enemies" of US (or Israel) in Europe will get their phones bricked as sanctions, and as a result become second class citizens.
I don't even see the necessity for having hardware attestation. We've had for decades online ID systems that can you can run on any device with an internet connection.
But think of the children, right?
They point out that some other service could do it:
> It should also be noted that this project is an example of a solution that is considered to meet certain requirements of the DSA, regarding the protection of minors. It does not prevent the use of other solutions that also meet those requirements.
Is anyone building that service?
Besides the obvious issues at hand, it's kinda ironic they publish this on Github, EU tech independence is going great.
As more people move away from spyPhone devices, how is this going to work. Especially having BigTech being able to hold the EU ransom over access to basic government services.
A phone should not be a requirement to partake in society, and I´d even argue the same for a bank account. But I see this month another strong push towards a digital Euro. Is that the true purpose behind this push for .eu ID Apps?
Here's my crack at a good-enough solution for the U.S. It doesn't have a ton of granularity - but the concept is shovel ready now, dirt cheap, and privacy preserving.
Video Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmcUJ5u65Q0
Actual Demo: https://app.hornpub.click
How it works:
1) Go to app.horpub.click
2) Create an ephemeral passkey
3) Extract its public-key and id (this binds the credential you're creating to your device)
4) The user copies this data to their bank's Age-Verification-Section
5) The bank creates an object that it signs with an attestation of the user's age (KYC) and their pass-key-public-key
6) The user copies this back to app.hornpub.click
7) The passkey is verified on the server, the bank's signature is verified by the server, some other meta-data is verified to make sure nothing weird is happening.
8) The user's age has been verified by their bank without the bank knowing who is asking for verification
* This method is more private than anything requiring sharing your photo-id online
* This method doesn't trigger GLBA or GDPR (user copies data themselves)
* This method is free to the merchant (hornpub)
What happens if some party is able to get logs of the bank's age attestation signings and of hornpub.click's steps #2 and #6? It appears this would present some risk of matching up hornpub.click accounts with real IDs.
This is called "linkability" and ideally should be avoided so anonymous age verification can be safe.
Banks and most sites requiring age verification are _littered_ with tracking software that does _literally_ this.
Further, if you put on an adblocker and I get access to the logs at ironbank and hornpub; I could just query them for your IP address.
Collusion to this degree is possible, but doesn't seem worth worrying about if the aforementioned attack vectors still exist. My $0.02.
What's crazy to me is why they didn't go for that kind of implementation. This works well, ensures privacy, can be audited easily, and doesn't need a f*cking app on my phone.
If you read the guidelines they actually want to implement a double-blind approach with ZKPs, which imo is significantly better than a challenge-response pub key system in term of privacy.
If you're not familiar this would mean the verifier doesn't learns anything except a statement about attributes (age, license, etc); and the EU doesn't learn what attributes have been tried to verify or by who.
Not asking to troll or be a jerk. Promise.
What would need to happen in the United States to implement a reliable ZKP age verification system - and how long would it take to roll it out?
Asking because it feels like the Titanic has sunk, and we're eschewing a floating door because the coast guard has regulation conformant life rafts that would work better.
> United States to implement a reliable ZKP age verification system (my emphesis)
Realistically at least 3-4 years, assuming they want to keep the same goals as eIDAS. I think the (software) implementation will be the least costly part, time-wise; but it takes a long time before everyone adopts a new social system. Especially in the US where there has been no precedent for digital identification. Even with full control of your own ID & and solid implementation details, there will be push-back just for suggesting that people/companies should adopt it.
If I work for Aylo (pornhub, etc) I'm telling every fintech and click-and-mortar bank who wants more customers to do this yesterday!
"Hey third fifth of Oregon! Do you want to triple your customer base in Oregon for the cost of a small dev team and 1 month of work?!"
> f*cking app on my phone
I need another app on my phone like I need another hole in my head...
But the bank and the horn content provider could collude and that would let the bank know that you're watching horn (shame, shame!).
The ZKP approach aims to prevent this attack method.
Chase.com currently is using:
mPulse
Google Marketing Platform Meta
LinkedIn Ads
Trade Desk
Aggregate Knowledge (Trans Union)
Adobe Audience Manger
Can you elaborate on how the risk of ironbank and hornpub colluding by de-anonymizing you via rainbow tables or IP forensics is substantially greater than Chase and PornHub using - Google Marketing?
It isn't, but due to bureaucracy, when designing a solution, it's that solution that has to be "secure" without really considering that the current outside situation is already insecure..
Anyway I'm not advocating for this solution, just addressing the question directly.
Thanks for the feedback.
I don't see this as the end all ultimate solution for age verification. I see it more as a tourniquet; imperfect - but better than bleeding to death.
Tangentially, I would love to be able to see the age of everyone on the internet. IRL this gives us so much context when having an interaction.
Further tangent, I'm not big on digital ID and stuff overall but then I'll play an online game with cheaters and wonder if it's not the solution to things like this. Lifetime cross platform online game bans tied to your real life ID which you need to sign into this new all encompassing anticheat.
I don't think that anything should be as harsh ever but yes, having a reputation that goes everywhere with you is how we deal with problematic people in real life. That's how we stay civil without AI systems constantly scan us or some type of police constantly watching. Also, we tend to tolerate, forgive and eventually forget when someones behavior improves, so... Maybe actually having a continuous persona can help with the nihilistic tendencies too?
False positives aren't exactly rare. Cheaters trolled PunkBuster's memory scans by sending offending payloads matching blacklisted signatures over popular IRC channels, less recently they exploited an RCE vulnerability to deploy cheats to other players computers, mid-game. AMD released drivers hooking themselves into games processes, triggering detections. And there's a lot of less obvious problems with this approach.
I dream of a world, in which people are judged not by their age but by the content of their character.
And I hope they give their gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, salary and geo coordinates.
right, because everything has to be a hyperbole. Either it has to be context-free or full totalitarian environment, right?
Maybe the internet was a mistake.
I think this ship has sailed; I'm in India and I literally can't spend money without a phone.
Looks like the 'number of the beast' isn't a number; It's a smartphone from Google or Apple. Who knew?
So in order to be a part of European society I need to accept the terms and conditions of US companies?
What happens if something goes wrong and you have to rely on contacting a human in Google of all places? Sorry, you have a copyright strike on your YouTube account, now you can't file taxes! Hopefully you have enough followers on Twitter than you can get them to pay attention.
Something tells me the granny on the bus can verify her age by going to the local service desk.
My experience with digitalisation is that the optional physical service desks quickly start disappearing once the younger generations start using digital equivalents.
Card payments and digital banking have closed most bank offices outside the larger cities. Mail dropoff boxes are slowly dying out. Paper bank invoices now cost extra (an unreasonable amount extra).
Granny may be able to verify her age, but the service desk won't necessarily be local.
When the UK age verification legislation was being debated I recall people saying "don't worry about unintended consequences, it's not like you'll be have to show your ID to random websites! Someone will show up with a reasonable methodology. You'll be able to e.g. show your ID at a shop and get an anonymous token.".
And plenty of people, including myself, thought "this is so dystopian it couldn't possibly happen".
It did happen, and it's as bad as the doomsayers said it would be.
Seeing this kinda stuff makes me want to keep my physical license and ID. No need for digital ones, I'm good with the cards.
Along with chat control, it really seems like the EU is pushing a dystopian digital agenda.
I mean, the EU is something like a modern take on Soviet Union so it shouldn't be suprising.
Suuure, if the USSR had been a deeply neoliberal market economy. Something tells me you don't know anything about either the EU or the USSR.
While I agree EU is nothing like USSR, calling it a market economy is kind of questionable. It’s a bit of a hybrid, which companies allowed to market and sell on their own but with intense regulatory control over product design.
From USBC to ad supported business models, the EU has fairly tight control over how products are designed and monetized, in a way that I don’t think can be described as a pure market economy.
Note that I’m NOT saying their level of centralized control and government specification of product requirements is bad. It’s a legit trade off and there are arguments that some or all of it is enlightened. But it’s certainly not a place where you just build your product and ship it and let the market decide.
since when a market economy need to have no regulation?
Market economies are contrasted with planned economies, i.e. how prices are determined and production allocated, and the EU most decidedly is not that.
Well, obviously there are differences, but some overreaching and, I believe, unrealistic policies, such as the EU's climate policies, are somewhat reminiscent of the Soviet Union's central planning.
It's time to rush to Russia, while we still can.
If they accept us, of course. Not everyone is Snowden.
Did you forget the "\s" marker?
Russia is a one way step ahead here, with mandatory pre-installed apps, full-scale internet censorship (still catching up with China, though), mandatory DPI, etc.
This is strange, in Italy our eID system can be used from the desktop with a (recent) smart card reader
this was the case in portugal too, although i don't know if it still is since gov apps have been pushed to the apple and google stores. edit: it should still work according to this https://www.autenticacao.gov.pt/cartao-cidadao/autenticacao
Gov app uses the "Chave Móvel Digital", which can be used in the browser, as well as in a variety of mobile apps. This CMD can also be used to digitally sign documents.
I believe it's still possible to use the physical card with a reader for many things.
I think some services still don't work with the CMD. Recently, I had to ask for changes to my car's document, and it seems it's only possible with the card itself. (https://www.automovelonline.mj.pt/AutoOnlineProd/)
It seems very reasonable to me for a first version of a system to only support the most popular platforms. Especially since this is open source, nothing stops enthusiasts to port the mechanisms to more niche platforms later.
> Especially since this is open source, nothing stops enthusiasts to port the mechanisms to more niche platforms later.
Not even hardware attestation?
Lets pretend the EU would mandate Desktop Support, we all know it will be only applied to Windows and Apple. Maybe for Linux, BSD it will never be applied.
In anycase we all know ways of bypassing this age verification will be found, probably by the kids themselves. But all this will do is enable US big tech, killing the very EU based companies the EU has been crying about for years.
Meta, Twitter, Google and M/S could not have created a better law to protect them then this law.
This whole thing is good news for external hard disk manufacturers
EU gonna EU. You should be thankful. If they made a desktop app answering the cookie banner would rival applying for citizenship in complexity.
Looking forward to this becoming the norm in the US at some point around the time I retire from the tech sector to go farm. I will take a nice boat ride into the ocean and throw my phone into a particulary deep spot.
I said what I said, do not @ me.
A lot of people outraged by this but ultimately this is good news - the more flagrant & public the technical incompetence of the people putting together these idiotic systems, the easier mass push back will be to foment.
It's not lol.
The discussion has been shifted from "whether age verification should be a thing" to "how to implement a more convenient age verification system."
Is there anything in the proposal to stop people from VPN'ing to a free country and access their porn from there?
No, but once VPNs have become the only escape hatch available, this will be used a justification to ban them.
VPN will maybe work for porn but, as they say, "Age verification plays a crucial role across various scenarios, including access to online services, purchases of age-restricted products and claiming age-related benefits."
I think they want to make age verification mandatory for subscribing to VPN services too.
Then you subscribe to the VPN with a VPN
Yes, the EU will implement DPI and VPN restrictions in the futrue.
no, like there's nothing preventing you from getting porn via USENET.
This has always been a "best effort" initiative that is unlikely to stop "dedicated" users.
You can’t fence in the wind
so a smartphone is required by law? that's fucked up
No! Only required if you want to participate in society.
And what gets me is that it's not just 'you need a phone', it's 'you need a Google or Apple account'.
And neither Google or Apple are EU-companies.
not A smartphone: an iphone OR an android verified device.
not your linux phone with waydroid or fairphone with lineageos
Well, only smartphones made and controlled by American corporations that are subject to US laws.
I looked into the Swiss version of this, which is documented here: https://swiyu-admin-ch.github.io/
They faced the same question. Here is their answer: https://github.com/orgs/swiyu-admin-ch/discussions/20
The tldr is that they have a legal requirement to bind "verifiable credential shares" with the same human who got the e-ID originally, up to the current best practical technology. On Android, they judge that to be "keep the private key in the HSM and require a local biometric (or PIN) unlock to use it". This is why they argue that proving your age will not be possible without a mobile device.
You can prove your age anonymously, for anonymous account, which can be used on a non-mobile device. It's just that the proving the age part must happen from a mobile device.
À propos of more or less nothing: in the Swiss context, websites requesting the proof will be required to request the least information necessary for their need. They must NOT ask for your name, ID number, or birthdate if the question they are trying to answer is, "is this person old enough for our service?"
This is excellent technology, and the Swiss law on it that we are voting for next weekend is an excellent law, so I urge a OUI/JA/SI vote on it, if you're a Swiss citizen.
These EU politicans should stay the fuck out of things they refuse to understand unless they want to see a real darknet take off.
At this point I think they very well do understand. Rocky times are ahead, TPTB know they're at risk if things get bad enough for the average denizen and they want to get in as much leverage against future dissidents as possible.
Erm... FUT?
- this project is just one implementation (POC if you want) - they simply state the current scope of the project
For anyone sane managing projects it makes sense to correctly allocate resources that would cover the most people.
and to all those whining butthurt individuals here - reality check is that it's way more probable that someone has and uses a smartphone than a computer. go out of your tiny bubbles...
Papieren Bitte, Citizen.