To be pretty annoyed/creeped out by this incoming internet age verification thing

[Fragmentedbrain]

Kids are as good as anyone at VPNs. It's just going to open adults up to blackmail and state control.

Also if you don't want your kids looking at adult material maybe don't let them have a smartphone until they're 16.

Agree - and unfortunately they have already started making inroads into preventing VPNS from being useful.

I was just talking to my husband about my future plans. I will be ditching everything with Google, stop using Gmail and using only Proton mail, I will pay for an upgrade too. I will use safer browsing sites, Brave is ok, but will look into that. I will continue using my VPN where I can. I will not sign up for or continue to use any sites that insist upon a video of my face (as some have already started to do). I will be using the VPN on all my devices, not just my tablet/computer as I currently do. I will look into the least intrusive mobile phones, I already have a tech wizard friend researching that, and if necessary will go back to using a brick, if I can find one that doesn't track movements, comments etc.

The only place I probably can't get out of it is when banks start to insist on biometrics/videos - as they will. Aside from that, I will go out of my way not to let any government link up comments like this with me in real life, for as long as I can, and hope the public wakes up to itself sooner rather than later.

Don't you think it's about time nudity and sex stopped being legal content?
Once it's on the Internet the individual has no way of taking it down. Therefore there is no way of knowing if the person still gives consent, or whether they even initially did. There's laws around revenge porn when reported, but no laws around the insane amount of intimate images and videos online.

Hopefully that'll cut down on the number of bots and trolls.

It's unremarkable that 3 male 'models' were setting fire to the PMs property? Ok.

Quite frankley I don't want to have to put my credit card details all over the internet in order to be "allowed" to access anything our esteemed government deems "adult?"

You dont have to, it's not compulsory.🤷‍♀️

Stranger things happen at sea.

Why would your credit card details be ‘all over’ the internet?

Do you:
-shop online for clothes or food
-make reservations at restaurants, hotels or air b and b
-book flights
-book concert tickets
-book activities for children online

You give your credit card details every time you do that. What’s the difference?

You think they were acting for a foreign power?

In theory PCI-DSS standards make using cards on the internet safe. Card details should never be stored, and unique hashes generated for each transaction (or series of transactions if you are subscribing).

Of course whether the company you are dealing with is actually enforcing these standards is another matter. In theory they should be subject to regular independent audits to make sure they are maintaining the correct levels of security.

However if the UKs very own MoD lacks the basic competence to keep an above-top-secret list of spies and agents safe, then I would suggest folk adjust their expectations accordingly.

If these sites are all hunky dory and the users have belief they aren’t from dodgy entities - why are they so nervous about giving their details?? As others have said do they feel that way if buying from Amazon etc ??

A lot of people use Apple Pay to shop online so the card details are not there, I have checked that mine are not left on old shopping sites since the M&S hack.

If MN asks for age/ID verification I'll just stop using it. I stopped using it over the cookies thing and only came back because I wanted to know what people were saying about the For Women Scotland judgment.

I don't disagree with it at all for porn sites but it is a bit ridiculous for a site like this.

What would they be stopping? It’s not just for adults. I mean a 16 year old can vote soon but no to posting on mumsnet

Yeah like a married man moving in with a gay man for lockdown...

What are you wanging on about and how is it relevant to the topic?

None of this will work because people will just access sites outside the UK. It's just the government posturing.

Ooh right, yeah best not bother then.

Let’s not bother with gun restriction either. People will just get hold of them illegally. I also don’t know why there’s a law about selling cigarettes to children. They just nick them, or get an adult to buy them for them. Come to think of it, some people find their way around most laws. Perhaps we shouldn’t have any laws at all.

Don’t some weight loss jab sites require live video as evidence of ID?

Why is no one up in arms about that?

That's because they want the jabs and have to prove they are overweight. I also had to do a video to get the NHS app in Covid to use to go on holiday as the vaccines were on there. I wouldn't do one for a forum though because it's not something that I need and wouldn't affect my life if I didn't use it. People also have to do them for some banks. I think it is best to limit this sort of ID check to things you need rather than lots of random websites

Follow the thread.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/opinion_column_age_verification/

I wouldn't age verify for something like BlueSky, isn't it like X, I don't use either anyway but I suppose MN falls under the same umbrella, I can live without that as well.

They want the jabs, just like adults want the porn?
We have age checks for all sorts of things and no one argues against them, but not pornography. It’s weird.

@GingerBeverage I think a biggie is an awful lot of partnered up guys in particular are trying to hide the fact they are on it and are worried it will show up ‘somewhere ‘ - leaks etc