ZKP’s Aren’t Age Verification Silver Bullets
Age verification (laws and regulations requiring platforms and websites to assure or estimate that a user seeking to use an online service is of a certain age) is everywhere. At the time of writing, about half the states in the US have some internet age verification law in place, and dangerous proposals, from the KIDS Act to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), have been advancing at the federal…
Age verification laws are prevalent, with many US states and the European Union considering centralized age verification systems. However, these laws often fail to protect children and raise significant privacy concerns. Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) have been proposed as a potential solution, but recent evidence shows they are flawed.
ZKPs create a constant link to the entity that verified a user's age, posing a threat to digital rights. The EU's plan for age verification in a central app raises concerns about centralized power and potential authoritarian control over internet access. ZKPs, although mathematically impressive, were not designed for age verification and fail to address privacy and security issues adequately.
Written by urgent.news from EFF Deeplinks's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
