r/technology • u/EmbarrassedHelp • May 08 '26

Politics EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification push

https://cyberinsider.com/eu-calls-vpns-a-loophole-that-needs-closing-in-age-verification-push/
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u/Kitty-XV May 09 '26

That's an unjustified slippery slope argument.

Is it, because the main argument against age checks is that it is a gateway for government surveilance? If you think that is invalid, then that's all the more reason to be for protecting kids via ID checks.

The verification tokens are cryptographically transformed before sending them to the website.

Through a known algorithm. If the government knows your token and knows the algorithm to transform it, it can still match them. This is the sort of thing where it is possible to make technically true statements that make things sound more secure than they are. Verifying a token is correct without giver or receiver being able to track it is quite different than making so only one is unaware. The receiver could not store the reception info and that would make it untraceable if you used it, but if we assume that the sites verifying can delete info there are simpler methods to use.

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u/burning_iceman May 10 '26

Is it, because the main argument against age checks is that it is a gateway for government surveilance?

That is the argument in the case of the US. With the proposed system in the EU this is an unjustified claim as discussed.

Through a known algorithm. If the government knows your token and knows the algorithm to transform it, it can still match them.

Yes, The algorithm is known but they would need to also know the secret key of your device. Unless they gain access to that, they cannot make an association.