Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-brussels-launched-age-checking-app-hackers-say-took-them-2-minutes-break-it/

by axbyte • 3 months ago

300 209 3 months ago

Teafling• 3 months ago

The title of the original article seems wrong, they didn't launch the app, they published the source code ahead of the launch.

JimDabell6• 3 months ago

Note that this is an implementation of eIDAS:

https://www.eudi-wallet.eu/

The point of this is that you can use the credentials on your phone to prove that you are an adult to a website using zero-knowledge proofs to avoid disclosing your identity to anybody.

If somebody who has access to your unlocked phone can access the data in the app, then this is something that should be tightened up but it’s a substantial privacy improvement over the far more commonplace option of uploading your ID to every website that wants to know if you are an adult.

It’s an attempt to avoid things like this:

Discord says 70k users may have had their government IDs leaked in breach (Oct 2025, 435 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45521738

sam_lowry_• 3 months ago

You are mixing things up, and EU abbreviations do not help.

Many countries in EU already have electronic identity documents and delegate authentication to mobile apps one way or another.

eID or mobile identity application operating over QR codes and used to log into websites and apps is a commodity here.

This has nothing to do with age verification.

JimDabell6• 3 months ago

I’m not sure what you are saying I am mixing up.

The article links to the source code repository here:

https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android...

That links to the tech spec:

The solution leverages the existing eIDAS infrastructure, including eIDAS nodes and the trust framework for trusted services, to ensure a high level of security and reliability. By aligning with the technical architecture of the EU Digital Identity Wallet ARF, the solution delivers secure, reusable, and interoperable proofs of age.
The solution enables users to present their Proof of Age attestation to Relying Parties, primarily for online use cases. The system is optimised for secure and privacy-preserving online presentation, allowing users to prove their eligibility without disclosing unnecessary personal information.

— https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic...

Annex A includes details on the ZKP:

AVI SHOULD support the generation of Zero-Knowledge Proofs using the solution detailed in: "Matteo Frigo and abhi shelat, Anonymous credentials from ECDSA, Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2024/2010, 2024, available at https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/2010".

— https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic...

And the linked paper:

Anonymous digital credentials allow a user to prove possession of an attribute that has been asserted by an identity issuer without revealing any extra information about themselves. For example, a user who has received a digital passport credential can prove their “age is ” without revealing any other attributes such as their name or date of birth.

— https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/2010

snackbroken3• 3 months ago

The point of this is that you can use the credentials on your phone to prove that you are an adult to a website using zero-knowledge proofs to avoid disclosing your identity to anybody.

It is my understanding that this is not possible. I would be happy to be shown to be wrong, but to me it seems like you can either prevent people from lending out their credentials, or you can preserve the anonymity of the user, but not both.

You can use 0KP to prove you have a signed certificate issued by your government that says you are an adult, but then anyone with such a certificate can use it to masquerade as however many sock puppets they like and act as a proxy for people who aren't adults. You can have the issuing government in the loop signing one-time tokens to stop Adults-Georg from creating 10k 18+ attestations per day, but then the issuing government and the service providers have a timing side-channel they can use to correlate identities to service users. Is there some other scheme I'm missing that solves this dilemma?

actionfromafar• 3 months ago

Can attestations be rate-limited or is that the timing side-channel you are talking about?

JimDabell6• 3 months ago

It is my understanding that this is not possible. I would be happy to be shown to be wrong, but to me it seems like you can either prevent people from lending out their credentials, or you can preserve the anonymity of the user, but not both.

This is not designed to prevent adults from coöperating with minors; that makes no sense as a design goal because any technical measure can always be bypassed with “download this for me and give me the file”. This is designed to prevent minors from being able to access systems without an adult.

Nothing prevents an adult from buying alcohol on behalf of minors; that doesn’t mean laws that prevent minors from directly buying alcohol are useless.

sofixa10• 3 months ago

You can use 0KP to prove you have a signed certificate issued by your government that says you are an adult, but then anyone with such a certificate can use it to masquerade as however many sock puppets they like and act as a proxy for people who aren't adults

The certificates in question can use a few mitigations: short lived, hardware stored (in a TPM, making distribution harder), be single use, have a random id which the service being accessed can check how many times has been used.

but then the issuing government and the service providers have a timing side-channel they can use to correlate identities

That's not reallya concern, IMO. That would always exist as a risk - most people would probably have a flow of trying to do something, having to prove ID/age, doing that step, continuing with the something, which means you'd probably be able to time correlate the two sides quite often. The solution here is legal with strong barriers, not technical.

GoblinSlayer3• 3 months ago

masquerade as however many sock puppets they like

Multiple accounts must be supported, because e.g. personal and work accounts must be separate to not mix them.

nottorp4• 3 months ago

The point of this is that you can use the credentials on your phone to prove that you are an adult to a website using zero-knowledge proofs to avoid disclosing your identity to anybody.

That's the theory. How is it in practice?

In my opinion, it just means there is a single government database to hack to get copies of all IDs...

By the way have the "security experts" checking this app evaluated that part? Or they're just worried about the app users cheating?

sofixa10• 3 months ago

In my opinion, it just means there is a single government database to hack to get copies of all IDs...

That doesn't make sense, all IDs are already in a single government database. Kind of by definition in fact, for IDs to be useful they need to be emitted by a central authority with associated security and revokability guarantees.

The implementations I've seen rely on an app reading your physical ID and its NFC chip, comparing that with a selfie to ensure it's the same person, and being able to provide anonymous proof you are of age based on that, or proof that you are indeed who you say you are.

GoblinSlayer3• 3 months ago

Do you care about it when running a smartphone full of NSA backdoors, CIA backdoors, Google backdoors, Apple backdoors, Baidu backdoors, Chrome backdoors and official reCAPTCHA backdoors and google analytics backdoors?

Mindwipe2• 3 months ago

The point of this is that you can use the credentials on your phone to prove that you are an adult to a website using zero-knowledge proofs to avoid disclosing your identity to anybody.

No it isn't.

Literally that is not the scope document, and such a solution would not be permitted by the EU as compliant with the legislation.

The app isn't zero knowledge. A prototype workflow has been designed for a one way transfer to sites that is zero knowledge, but it doesn't actually deliver zero knowledge because it you have to verify your age with an external provider to get the credential (which is not zero knowledge), the app has to be secured with either Apple or Google's attestation services (which are not zero knowledge), and the site has to be able to check with the original external provider that the credential hasn't been revoked (which is in no way zero knowledge).

JimDabell6• 3 months ago

Zero knowledge proofs are when the prover can prove the statement is true to the verifier without disclosing more information beyond the statement. It doesn’t mean the prover cannot talk to other systems to produce the statement.

rcxdude4• 3 months ago

The goal would be that neither the verification service nor the service you are verifying with can link the connection: the verification service can't tell which service you are connecting to, and the service you are verifying your age to can't determine your ID. The first two issues you mention don't necessarily seem to kill that (though I agree they are both suboptimal: once you are verified you should be able to generate your own verification keys without connecting to the verification service, and any requirement for attestation is just an unncessary restriction), though the revocation check does seem like it might be a problem.

The issue is that a lot of these services wave around a lot of words that _might_ mean that they are reasonably private, but it's damn hard to actually detemine if it is actually working like that in practice (the eIDAS standard seems to suggest the ZKP stuff is entirely optional, for example).

lyu07282• 3 months ago

The alternative would be to just not do anything and to remove liability from Meta et al. In the world we live in, where competing interests already spent tens of billions to bribe/lobby the EU, we have to be realistic about it.

This open source and transparent ZKP-based approach is extremely surprising to see, publishing a draft in advance and inviting the public to break it so it can be improved? Are you kidding me? What about the billions of private investment in all the companies that offer centralized ID checks like Persona, Socure, ID.me and more? Thats a growing billion dollar industry. They all counted on this as a future market opportunity that the EU just seem to have destroyed at least in the EU?

People fighting against this age id app might be paradoxically useful idiots for billion dollar investments and lobbying efforts. The demos is once again dragged into the trenches to fight a war they don't understand.

subscribed5• 3 months ago

The main issue appears to be that as per the blueprint user MUST use one of the mandated handsets (iPhone or Android with pre-installed and privileged Google Services) and:

- MUST use either Google or Apple account - must not be banned by the provider or sanctioned in the USA

These issues have been flagged to the devs working on the blueprint since the inception, only to be handwaved away.

Getting banned can happen randomly even if you're not doing anything illegal or wrong (it's enough for a robot to decide you're within the blast radius), getting sanctioned can happen if you're an UN lawyer investigating human rights abuses USA actually likes.

So I do see a problem here.

like_any_other• 3 months ago

The alternative would be to just not do anything and to remove liability from Meta et al.

Or just give parents easy to use parental controls. But that wouldn't grow the surveillance state.

Neikius• 3 months ago

Or just let us set our age in the OS profile? Works for adults and kids.

VorpalWay• 3 months ago

Even better would be if the website provided the age rating in a HTTP header, and the browser could locally check if the account is allowed to see it. That way you avoid exposing the age of the user.

And yes, even sending an age bracket exposes the age over time as you can observe a repeat visitor changing brackets and compute the actual age from that. With the server sending the info instead you can't really tell if the browser blocked it, or if the user just didn't navigate further on the page. (The browser still need to fetch all the CSS and other resources though, otherwise that would be possible to tell apart.)

somenameforme3• 3 months ago

Can you give a brief explanation of how this is done with a zero-knowledge proof? That site is low information and painful to navigate, and it seems quite surprising to me that this is possible. ID verification, in the government sense, is ostensibly going to require matching an ID against a some other resource. If done locally then you can trivially spoof the result, akin to hacking a game, but if done remotely then it's not zero-knowledge.

I think a zero-knowledge system here would be quite desirable. But a centralized repository that is e.g. maintaining tabs on every single adult-authorization for every single person with verifiable details of them is, by contrast, a dystopic disaster waiting to happen because it will be hacked, leaked, and abused, sooner or later.

notTooFarGone2• 3 months ago

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...

Basically you can prove that you have an identification document and that a certain property is true without revealing anything else.

brabel2• 3 months ago

Most countries in the EU already have widely accepted identity proof apps mostly verified by the banks or the government itself. Once verified the identity app gets a certificate which is signed by the authority which issues the identity. We all know how that works as that’s how TLS works as well. The zero proof age check is based on verifiable credentials and the related verifiable presentation. Once you have a wallet with your identity it’s not hard to issue cryptographic proofs of some properties of your credentials, and age is a property of your identity credentials basically. To learn more about the technical details, search for the specifications I mentioned above: verifiable credentials, verifiable presentations.

jeroenhd2• 3 months ago

https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic... has an overview of the protocol so far. Annex B has the details on using ZKPs.

uyzstvqs2• 3 months ago

Then why does the linked GitHub explicitly state it uses OpenID4VP?

soco• 3 months ago

"Let’s say I downloaded the app, proved that I am over 18, then my nephew can take my phone, unlock my app and use it to prove he is over 18." - and how is that something that could, or should, be addressed by the app? Are we even serious??

kdheiwns6• 3 months ago

Because people share phones with their kids. It's not rare or even mildly unusual. The problem isn't that the app needs to solve this. The problem is the app is useless, along with this whole bizarre "need for age verification" plot that poofed out of existence simultaneously around the whole globe mysteriously a few months ago.

Sweepi5• 3 months ago

Well, reality called and says: Like ID, drivers license, credit cards and guns: Phones are sth. you dont just "share" with your kids. Also there is an option to guard the ID App with an additional PIN/Biometric.

JoshTriplett5• 3 months ago

Exactly. "Age verification" is the "think of the children" marketing campaign for "identity verification". Governments don't like anonymity; it makes it harder to find those they consider enemies. But it's hard to market something people don't want and get no benefit from. So, you dress it up in fear and make it easy to villify people who argue against it.

subscribed5• 3 months ago

My kid can take my phone and not be able to transfer any money form my bank account, because it's protected by pin and biometrics.

That's a solved problem and making an immense vulnerability out of it is silly.

Cthulhu_5• 3 months ago

That's why a lot of apps have a secondary login (PIN code, biometrics).

ramon156• 3 months ago

The Solution: constant face tracking /s

mr_mitm• 3 months ago

The phone also needs to be rooted for any of the attacks to work.

At least that's what the manufacturer's AI generated article says: https://eidas-pro.com/blog/eu-age-verification-app-hack-expl...

dbvn• 3 months ago

well of course because the whole reason you're making free men and women verify their identity with government-issued documents... was supposed to be to prevent that. If its not going to prevent such an easy work-around ITS NOT WORTH IT (not that it was in the first place)

rcxdude4• 3 months ago

When there's severe downsides to an measure to try to improve something else, the efficacy of it matters. This isn't about the app specifically, it's about the requirement for this kind of verification in the first place.

mrweasel7• 3 months ago

"Let’s say I downloaded the app, proved that I am over 18, then my nephew can take my phone, unlock my app and use it to prove he is over 18."

While I appreciate the zero-knowledge proofs is considered, how the hell did no one in charge of the app design think of this? It's is literally the first question I asked when I first heard about this app. You go to the app in a store to buy alcohol, you're asked to verify your age, but that's not what you're doing. Your simply showing the store that you have a phone, with and app, which was configured by some over 18 (maybe).

Honestly I don't think it's possible to verify that you're over 18 without also providing something like a photo ID (and even that is error prone).

You can probably do something online, where the website or app does some back channel communication to a server that verifies a token. Even that is going to have issues. You could add a "List of sites that has verified your age" option where you can revoke the verification, in case your nephew borrows your phone.

They are going to implement this and it will be "good enough", but I don't see this being 100% secure or correct.

Sweepi5• 3 months ago

Just like anyone can take anyone's credit card and go shopping - but in contrast Phones are (or at least can be) much more secure.

mrweasel7• 3 months ago

That's not what you're competing with. Your competing with a drivers license with a photo (not a great photo) and some countries have pretty easily faked drivers licenses, but others have drivers licenses in hard plastic with holographic features.

The credit card doesn't work as age verification.

Mashimo4• 3 months ago

How does the nephew unlock the phone and app?

mrweasel7• 3 months ago

If it's just a PIN, and the PIN is his aunts birthday, it might not be much of a challenge. We also have to consider the cases where the adult is complicit, in these cases the app is even less secure than photo ID (for store purchases, not necessarily online).

Sweepi5• 3 months ago

These are the sources cited by the article:

[1] https://xcancel.com/Paul_Reviews/status/2044502938563825820

[2] https://xcancel.com/paul_reviews/status/2044723123287666921

[3] https://csa-scientist-open-letter.org/ageverif-Feb2026

| "The saga is turning into a PR disaster for Brussels. "

imo: mostly because the Author wants it be a disaster.

The App has not launched, they published the source code in order to invite external review. I dont have time to every claim, but e.g. this [see quote below] seems to be blown out of proportions to me - the app fails to delete a temp. image, which results in a selfie being stored indefinitely(?) on the internal disk of your device - if an adversary has access to the internal disk of my phone, they can also just access the photo roll.

"For selfie pictures:

Different scenario. These images are written to external storage in lossless PNG format, but they're never deleted. Not a cache... long-term storage. These are protected with DE keys at the Android level, but again, the app makes no attempt to encrypt/protect them.

This is akin to taking a picture of your passport/government ID using the camera app and keeping it just in case. You can encrypt data taken from it until you're blue in the face... leaving the original image on disk is crazy & unnecessary."

deminature2• 3 months ago

Not immediately deleting the selfie is a pretty fundamental and egregious mistake to make. People are particularly sensitive to selfies not being handled correctly after Discord lost thousands of them, despite promising to delete them after age verification occurred (and then not doing so) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo

The damage is limited because the selfie is only retained on device, but it still does not signal competency from the EU to fail at the most basic hurdle of disposing of the selfie once verification is complete.

GoblinSlayer3• 3 months ago

Welp, this ship has sailed, corporations and governments have data hoarding addiction. They might not yet ask where your grandpa lived 57 years ago, but they seriously ponder this idea how to extort it from you of where else to get this data.

jimmydorry2• 3 months ago

Discord lost thousands of them, despite promising to delete them after age verification occurred (and then not doing so)

This is misleading, yet everyone seems to repeat it. Discord's implementation of ID verification did not retain IDs. Reporting on this was so poor, but what appears to have happened was that people that failed age estimation / ID checks had to raise a support ticket and get manually reviewed. That support platform was pwned and the active support tickets were leaked. Who knows how long these support tickets were set to live for, but up to 70,000 active tickets getting leaked feels like a drop in the bucket. It's also not immediately clear to me what the alternative is (other than not getting hacked), when you require human intervention to review problematic IDs. Even if the ID only lived on their server for 24 hours during manual review, across a userbase of >200 million users, that's a lot of IDs at risk at any given moment, especially during these initial roll outs of age verification.

michelb• 3 months ago

The App has not launched, they published the source code in order to invite external review.

I read that from many reactions in discussions, but not from their own channels? (Maybe I missed that)

It is ready for deployment: https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/european-ag...

The message is that it is ready, 'ticks all the boxes' (the published code does not) and that is now ready for integration by other countries. https://xcancel.com/vonderleyen/status/2044340323120193595#m

Then in the article I read that what we see now is a 'demo' version. So the code on Github is not the current code?

rpdillon• 3 months ago

Yeah, I was tracking this when it was first announced and they were very adamant that there was no longer any excuse for a vendor to not integrate age checks because they had now released this.

jeroenhd2• 3 months ago

It's not "ready for deployment". "the technology is ready and will soon be available for citizens to use"

Member states will either fork or redevelop their own apps around the proof-of-concept app. The app on Github that was "hacked" will never be deployed directly and that was never the plan either.

So far, this whole project has been an excellent way to gauge news outlets on whether they're trying to report the news or are just trying to win clicks through FUD and outrage. Most of them don't seem to know what they're writing about when they report about flaws and problems.

close044• 3 months ago

On top of the pretty bad article, HN finds the “can’t win” scenario again. There’s no age verification scheme that will survive “collusion”, that’s when the adult allows the minor to use validated credentials, devices, etc. And whatever more intrusive age verification schemes we come up with will also fail this but add the intrusiveness to ruffle even more HN feathers. We can have the constant face, fingerprint and DNA scan for as long as the sensitive apps is used. Everything gets stored on a central server for safety so your kid can’t hack the device and replace the reference sample. /s

"Let’s say I downloaded the app, proved that I am over 18, then my nephew can take my phone, unlock my app and use it to prove he is over 18."

Love the magic step in the middle, unlock my app. Ask for passcode or faceid to “unlock your app”. That’s a lot of legwork the adult has to do so the child can “trick” the system.

Some people will forever be shocked that if they leave on the table an open booze or medicine bottle, loaded gun, etc. a child can just take them and misuse them. The blame is unmistakably with bottle and gun manufacturers, right?

Put a modicum of effort to protect the sensitive apps or supervise the child when you share your device. They can do a lot of damage even with age appropriate apps. Wanna see how quickly your kid will tell everyone on the net how much money you have (via proxies), where you live, and when you go on vacation? Or tell someone the credit card number they swiped from your pocket if the other person makes it sound like a game?

thomastjeffery5• 3 months ago

The first premise you are avoiding is that a child can misuse a phone.

The second premise you are avoiding is that the government can define, for every child, what constitutes misuse.

You are advocating thought crime. You do not have my support.

My government cannot adequately manage responsibility for my cupboards. It therefore shall not have authority over them.

close044• 3 months ago

I replied to the content of the article and HN comments, not what you think I should have replied to. If anything you even failed to notice that I expect parents to do some of the parenting and not expect an app to magically do it all for them.

The government already defines what misuse is both for children and adults, defines responsibility for a lot of things even in your cupboard, and has been doing so for as governments have been a thing. And I don’t think you understand what “thought crime” is.

You won’t hear me say this too often but next time use an LLM to write your comments, any LLM will do, can only get better.

notTooFarGone2• 3 months ago

Do you also refuse to show id when buying alcohol because the gubbernment does not have authority over what you may buy?

That's how you sound.

Cthulhu_5• 3 months ago

Your government does have various authorities over what you put in your cupboards though. like, you can't just put a gun in there (actually I don't know where you live but that's true for most countries). You can't just get in a car.

Anyway, ultimately it's best effort. No security is flawless, but if it stops 99% or more of cases it's better than 0%.

akabalanza• 3 months ago

If my kids cannot change a boolean into a json, they do not deserve the [redacted]

mghackerlady• 3 months ago

I don't work with json very often, and this is probably a joke, but how would that even work?

testaccount28• 3 months ago

op meant "in" not "into"

ChrisArchitect• 3 months ago

Previously on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47803773

nikolay• 3 months ago

They didn't launch an app per se - they've released the source code of such app. So, let's be more precise on the terminology, please!

runnkos• 3 months ago

1. Devs forgot to delete images in some failed scenarios. Images that do not get sent anywhere and remain locally. In an open source app that anyone can point calmly to the bug and it will get fixed easily.

2. "an attacker can simply remove the PinEnc/PinIV values from the shared_prefs file"... Any android developer knows that to access the shared prefs file you need ROOT access on the phone, which is impossible on the stock os. Rooting the phone requires advanced knowledge. It means deliberately nuking your phone security, which most likely will require factory resetting the phone in the process. Or a hacker would need to use a sophisticated exploit, maybe even 0day, to access an app that would allow him to log in on some adult sites. Sounds reasonable (no).

So, the guy found two very superficial problems in a early demo app. Does not even look at the important code with the actual implementation of the zero knowledge proof cryptography, as it is way above his skill level. Throws malicious allegations mixed with blatant lies. Cries for attention to the whole internet and it gets augmented by news and people who understand security and technology even less than him. He dares calling it "hacking" in under 2 minutes. That's just disgusting.

He even calls himself "Security Consultant". Lord have mercy on whoever is going to work with him.

James_K2• 3 months ago

The “hack” in question is pointing out that the app forgets to delete images of the user's face and ID (stored). A lot of people have pictures of their face already on the phone, and often their ID as well so this is hardly a security flaw in any real sense.

philipallstar10• 3 months ago

"Lots of people choose to keep their key under their mat, so our lock not stopping anyone is hardly a security flaw in any real sense".

James_K2• 3 months ago

But it's not “lots of people,” it's everyone. Everyone has a picture of their face on their phone. And the information is encrypted because phones use disk encryption by default. “Someone can get a photo of your face and passport if they have full unencrypted access to your phone's hard drive” is like saying “someone could turn off your alarm and make you late for work if they break into your house.” There are simply bigger concerns in that situation.

nalekberov2• 3 months ago

The title seems totally misleading.

The app still hasn’t launched. There’s only so long you can run on hype before you lose the readers you were trying to win over.

gorgoiler• 3 months ago

This all feels a bit like letting children into a nightclub and then needing to see ID every time you buy a drink.

RobertoG2• 3 months ago

Right? It seems to me that the filter should be at the device level by the parents.

Cthulhu_5• 3 months ago

What if they use someone else's device though? Or circumvent the filter? Come on, this is Hacker News, "we" circumvent guardrails because we can and because we know no security is perfect, often from a young age.

I love how a lot of the "this is the parents' responsibility" opinion-havers don't seem to remember what it was like to be a kid themselves and / or don't have kids of their own.

crimsoneer2• 3 months ago

... isn't this how most bars/pubs work?

RobertoG2• 3 months ago

The metaphor still works, minors in pubs are, presumably, under the supervision of their parents, otherwise they have not business being there in the first place.

Lapsa• 3 months ago

reminder - there's tech out there capable of reading your mind remotely

cm-t3• 3 months ago

It is "funny" to read every single time "to protect minors online" like there are no adult around them, while technically those technologies are by design to control every single human for online access. It is not because the words are well chosen to sound unpolitical, just for "security", that it make those law/technology not political. It is political.

spiderfarmer3• 3 months ago

Speaking of well chosen words. If you have to put "funny" between quotes at the beginning of a sentence, just tell us how you really feel.

I fully understand the people who say it's all about control.

I also understand why politicians feel they have to do something. My wife works with low IQ, low income and otherwise underprivileged kids. The completely unsupervised 'iPad' generation, if you will.

There are no adults in their lives. The 'adults' in their lives are mentally children, emotionally unavailable or working too many hours to do a good job at parenting. You cannot expect them to take any responsibility.

Also, every one of my 3 children has had classmates looking up porn during class. It starts around age 7-8 nowadays and it's always the same demographic.

cm-t3• 3 months ago

Let's take an example with a current project of law from Macron (french president):

"Some people can't support their health condition, and they should be helped to die". This end of life law is introduced like a care service for people having issue with health with no happy ending at sight.

The reality of the vision of Macron (liberale capitalist) is: All his actions are made to kill public health care, and aims to open the field to private corporate. People in need of bed at hospital are denied (public beds are getting more and more cut). People in need of teams for mental care are denied (public teams are getting more and more cut and overbooked). People in need are juste denied. They cant' pay? great, they can now legally choose death, it will be legal. Next client please. Everyone who can't pay doesn't need to feel a weight on his family/friend. Yay :/

This law is shown like a right of care, all the population can be legally targeted, while they could just have the right of health care and stay alive in decent condition. This could be another solution, but it doesn't meet Macron (and its sponsors) ultra capitalist's vision of open market.

Note: current concerned people are the first to call a big NOPE on this law.

I think you see where I go: I think you're highlighting a true and very important problem (I've worked 10 years with children, i confirm your point), but the current solution brings more issues than what it is supposed to solve, same for Macron's end of life law. Having a problem doesn't mean you have to risk the full society in a Orwellien way.

Sorry im not english speaking native, hope you understand more my feeling ?

throw_await• 3 months ago

The EU let Ursula von der Leyen say a lot of false statements about this https://netzpolitik.org/2026/gesichtsscan-und-handy-zwang-vo...

ahartmetz• 3 months ago

She is basically a human bullshit generator whose goal function is attaining power.

senorqa2• 3 months ago

Why does this app even exist? Why is everyone in this thread so okay with more surveillance? It’s ironic that people are arguing over technicalities instead of tackling the moral and societal impact of age verification.

crimsoneer2• 3 months ago

As a society, we broadly agree shops should check ID before selling kids alcohol. It is not that crazy to extend that online.

ptx• 3 months ago

The online version has been extended quite a bit beyond what we broadly agree. If we translated back to checking ID in shops, it might look more like this:

1) Obviously you can't be trusted to handle your own ID card, because you could lend it to someone else or manipulate it in some way, so there should be a trusted guard with you at all times to manage your ID card for you and hand it to the shopkeeper.

2) Obviously you can't be trusted not to try to influence or attack your guard, so you must be kept in handcuffs for your own safety.

3) Obviously you can't be trusted with acquiring unapproved tools or meeting unapproved people who might enable you to break out of your handcuffs, so the guard must only allow you to communicate with approved people and buy approved products.

Conveniently and profitably, this also puts the company supplying the guard in a position where they can sell access to their control over you (as a consumer and as a source of experimental data) to their trusted partners.

uyzstvqs2• 3 months ago

Showing my ID at the store doesn't register this on a government OpenID4VP server, and the store doesn't copy my ID.

Aurornis• 3 months ago

Why is everyone in this thread so okay with more surveillance?

Sentiment on hacker news is surprisingly split on age verification as an abstract concept. There are always a lot of posts in favor of age verification.

I’ve tried engaging with some of them and it usually reveals a belief that age verification will only apply to certain sites they don’t use and don’t want other people using easily: Facebook, porn sites, TikTok, Instagram and the like.

As soon as age verification comes too close to services we might use, like Discord, the sentiment turns to complete outrage.

Nasrudith2• 3 months ago

Because they are hysterical morons who had their brains scooped out when they watched propaganda about social media being bad for children.

edarchis• 3 months ago

Please stop saying "Brussels" to mean the EU. It's a nasty trick to give the idea that it's some kind of external entity forcing your country to do something. It's not. It's an assembly. And it's insulting to people from Brussels. I don't want this any more than you do.

finghin4• 3 months ago

It’s very common throughout English. The Russian government is refered to as Moscow, US as Washington. It’s the same and doesn’t refer to residents. It’s known as synecdoche.

In other words, sorry but it’s here to stay.

lukan3• 3 months ago

No, it is not quite the same as Moscow and Washington are capitals of centralised states who give orders to the whole nation.

The EU on the other hand does not have a common constitution, army etc. so is not a real state (yet). It is made up of soveraign nations who come together debate and decide there, but then it is still up to the members to implement that.

So the transition to the EU as one state is happening, but might never complete.

bboozzoo• 3 months ago

If there was a major event in Belgium, which city would the news outlets refer to in order to avoid ambiguity?

froidpink• 3 months ago

It's more a metonymy than a synecdoche

maybewhenthesun• 3 months ago

The problem here, and the source of OOPs annoyance I think, is that the governments of the constituting member states have the habit to present unpopular regulations as 'from Brussels' while taking credit for the popular things as from 'Den Haag','Berlin' or 'Paris' or whatever the local capital is. This habit is the main driver of anti-EU sentiments across the whole of europe. Which is a pity, mainly because it takes the attention away from highly needed reforms in the EU structures because people who could drive the reforms now just want out.

So while linguistically it's the same system as using 'Washington' or 'Moscow', Brussels is specifically in the bad spot where it gets blamed for impopular stuff but never praised for popular things.

nzeid• 3 months ago

No, Brussels is Belgium.

And Brussels is not the capitol of the EU because the EU is not a country.

philipallstar10• 3 months ago

It definitely forces countries to do things they want to do, generally via compliant leadership of those countries. See the last 15 years of UK voters being worried about immigration levels, vs immigration levels.

disgruntledphd2• 3 months ago

See the last 15 years of UK voters being worried about immigration levels, vs immigration levels.

Look, let's be clear here. The UK (as a member state) was concerned that the EU was becoming too federal. Therefore (following Machievelli) they decided to push for new members, mostly the eastern bloc countries.

Then, politically, it was difficult for them to refuse to allow immigration from those countries (many of the other members had a moratorium for a few years post-accession). This lead to lots of British people becoming very upset, at the EU for some reason (even though their government had done this).

seydor• 3 months ago

It's also very common inside the EU. Brussels is not an internal entity either, it's seen as distant eurocrats by most EU citizens. Only those interested in EU funds know about them really. It's not seen as a representative assembly

lkuty• 3 months ago

Being belgian I thought that the city of Brussels did something. Using the term EU is more precise I guess in this case. For us, Brussels is just a town in our country, not the EU or representing the EU.

GuB-42• 3 months ago

The assembly seats in Brussels, so the decision comes from Brussels (geographically).

It doesn't imply that people from Brussels are the ones to decide, not everyone has the same idea anyways. Though, as citizens of a EU member state, they have some responsibility, at least indirectly.

tremon• 3 months ago

Brussels is the seat of five governments: the city itself, the Brussels-Capital autonomous region, the Flemish Parliament and Government (luckily the Wallon Government seat is in Namur), the Belgian Federal Parliament, and the European Commission and Parliament.

The "Brussels" metonym is probably the most ambiguous reference to a government body on the planet.

cobbaut• 3 months ago

The assembly seats in Brussels, so the decision comes from Brussels (geographically).

Except that half the time the assembly seats in Strasbourg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_of_the_European_Parliamen...

948382828528• 3 months ago

It's a nasty trick to give the idea that it's some kind of external entity forcing your country to do something

Which it is. How nasty to engage in wrongthink.

croemer• 3 months ago

It's a figure of speech called metonymy. I agree Brussels is not very precise, a better word would be Berlaymont to refer to the EU commission specifically as there are a lot of institutions that could be meant by Brussels (Belgian federal govt, Brussels regional govt, EU commission, EU parliament, EU council, ...)

airza• 3 months ago

more precisely, it is synecdoche!

some_random• 3 months ago

The EU can force member states to do things though, what do you mean?

atoav3• 3 months ago

It would be possible to implement age verification in a way that would somewhat work and that would be to use the correct crypto on an government issued ID card. Crypto where the OS (or a website) can ask the card: "Is the holder of that card over X years old y/n?" and the card would just answer with a binary yes no question without exposing any other data while still checking the government signature.

Obviously that won't stop motivated teens from taking their parents ID cards or similar mechanisms. Thst means any system that likes to prevent that needs to additionally ensure the identity of the card holder. And then you create a privacy nightmare.

So my proposal would be to accept that nothing is ever perfect and just use the card and ensure that system works as well as it could.

Of course "card " is a standin for all manner of hardware that can do it, including phones.

Cthulhu_5• 3 months ago

in the Netherlands we have a better system called iDIN; it works like doing an online payment (iDeal / WERO):

* Website asks for age verification * User is redirected to their bank * Bank asks the user to log in - username/password, 2fa, bank app (whose login is behind the device's security and a secondary verification like PIN code or biometrics) * Bank tells the requester that the user is 18+, no more

This leverages a trusted party (your bank, which is subject to heavy IT security regulation and audits) and you need to show ID to open an account anyway), secrets only you know (and your kids can't easily take), phone security systems, etc. Does not require uploading ID to a 3rd party, does not require changing how IDs work, etc.

rcxdude4• 3 months ago

This still gives your bank a pretty good idea of what websites you are visiting though. It should not need to know this with modern cryptography.

atoav3• 3 months ago

There are people without bank account. It isn't a big part of the population (estimated to be 0.02% or about 16.000 people in Germany), but I still feel on principle this is a basal governmental function that should remain governmental and not tied to other services that can be denied to you for various reasons. This or you make having a bank account a guaranteed human right. I am fine with both.

anticrymactic• 3 months ago

Crypto where the OS (or a website) can ask the card: "Is the holder of that card over X years old y/n?" and the card would just answer with a binary yes no question without exposing any other data while still checking the government signature.

This is the same as "What's the card holders age" by simply binary searching for it. A better way would be:

1. Have the card define the countries age access levels. (Example in Germany: >=16 [Beer/Wine], >=18 everything else)

2. The app can only ask: "Is [BEER] allowed for the card holder y/n?

This makes it immediately cross-legislative and protects the exposed data from meta analysis.

Edit: This would allow for self exclusion too. Make it possible for individuals to give up access to gambling/alcohol/tabacco/porn nationally.

atoav3• 3 months ago

I don't think this belongs on the card to be honest. Otherwide each legislative adjustment would require population-scale updates.

This can go into the reader of anybody who e.g. sells beer to pick your example:

  1. Reader knows beer >= 18 because reader is in Germany  
  
  2. Reader asks card to verify >= 18
  
  3. etc.

This keeps the many cards simple and safe, while the locale is set to the thing that is both easier to police, to update and to support (far less people sell beer than buy it).

Self exclusion would still be possible if there is a standard for it.

dlahoda• 3 months ago

Why it needs documents? From video of liveness check it clearly visible that 35 years old bearded man is over 18.

yaro330• 3 months ago

Oh God not this stupid tweet again. He's "hacking" it from a rooted phone. You can't just willy nilly edit those files like that on a normal phone. Fml I would've written a CN under that.

On top of that they didn't infiltrate anything.

thunfischtoast• 3 months ago

Adding onto that: the app is open source. Finding possible weak points was the very reason of this exercise.

arnorhs• 3 months ago

There's something that is written between the lines here.

EU is often portrayed as overly bureaucratic, slow moving. The way this app was developed seems more in the line of "move fast, break things".

I don't know if that says something about the EU, or about the EU-naysayers, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

bilekas• 3 months ago

This is not the problem the title makes it out to be.. It's still in development.

"Now, when we say it's a final version, it's ... still a demo version." He added the final product is not yet available for citizens and "the code will be constantly updated and improved … I cannot today exclude or prejudge if further updates will be required or not."

The whole idea of this age requirement is ridiculous in the first place, changing the focus to how good or bad the unnecessary tools are is nothing but a nice distraction.

PowerElectronix• 3 months ago

Another day, another story about how far behind the EU is in tech.

PaulHoule• 3 months ago

The trouble here is not that the age checking is right or wrong but it would be unethical for anyone who has the competence to develop this kind of app to work on it because it is fundamentally unworkable -- it would be like me taking money from somebody to help them with their perpetual motion machine.

The kind of developer you are going to get is either going to be somebody who knows what time it is and cynically works on a project that they know is going to fail (unethical) or someone who is not going at it with "the end in mind" but is just cosplaying as a software developer (incompetent)

senorqa2• 3 months ago

stop calling it "age verification" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa3-TkHBh90

DrLindemann• 3 months ago

IDs and age are already checked if the internet access is bought (DSL, cable, whatever). Even if you buy a mobile phone SIM and contract, ID is checked. In most routers there is a check box regarding letting no adult classified media through, which should filter the most famous sites. (a click).

Parents are responsible for their offspring and minors in reach. If they neglect their responsibility they can be charged. If they handle them a bottle of booze or the keys to their car that is on their responsibility. WLANs have keys. Phones have Pins.

Compare the age verification app to the introduction of electronic medical record (ePA in Germany). The significant security features and fine granular controls that were used to advertise its introduction, were removed for simplicity when released.

And since most adult sites have user forum or comment function there very soon will be the call for identification ability.

This initiative (like a lot of others of the EU) opens just a lot of new problems (new threats, attack vectors, gives incentive for identity theft, makes services more fragile, introduces new parties and middlemen).

It won't solve the problem, that certain percentage of people have forked, that better did'nt.

Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it

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