| "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."
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 itâs 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.
> 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?
> 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?
> "Letâs 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.
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.
I don't know about other countries, but here it requires your passport or actual drivers license, and a 12 or 24 hour wait, to actually activate the drivers license app.
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).
"Letâs 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??
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.
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.
That's not reality for many of us. I don't consider my phone a secure device by any means. It has nothing on it that I'd regard as something I'd need to guard against my family.
I know a fair number of especially elderly people who want to disable PIN and bio-metrics from their phone, because they view it as a pain to deal with.
PINs can also be guessed or someone might look you over the shoulder and steal it that way. Many phones still doesn't have biometrics, or people don't want to use it.
Our realities might be different, but in my reality a cell phone, which you almost by definition brings with you out in the world, should never be considered a secure device.
Oh man, if the kid gets hold of both of their parents phones with login, they could divorce them. I don't have kids yet, so this might change, but I would not give them login and / or unsupervised access.
I don't think you can guess pins, as the phones locks after a few failed attempts.
You keep using the term âsecureâ that it sounds like you think education is like a prison sentence. Youâre not doing this for security but for safety. A stair gate or drawer child-proofing lock are by no means secure but you use them anyway for the childâs safety.
You canât just leave every dangerous thing out in the open because you âview it as a pain to deal withâ storing them safely and then blame everyone else for the situation that follows.
Our realities might be different but in my reality if you put 0 (zero) effort to keep some critical things safely away from your child because itâs too much of a hassle to do it, or theyâll get around that anyway, etc. then youâre failing your children.
You make it sound like you put no effort in understanding my comment and just followed up with whatever supported your view.
If you have anything on your phone that should be off limits to your child but make no effort to ensure that (give them the phone, no passwords, no supervision) because itâs too inconvenient you are failing the child. Can I put it in simpler words?
> What do you have on your phone that's dangerous?
For one, the phone itself since staring into a small screen at god knows what because supervising them is a chore is bad for anything you can imagine, from eyes, to posture, to brain development. But also my credit card numbers. All my passwords. Hardcore porn. Facebook and TikTok. The app that delivers booze to my doorstep. 50 shades of grey (the book and the movie). X (Twitter), I left the worst for last.
It doesnât matter, the discussion is about age verification for things that a child should be kept away from, whatever that is. If youâre trying to protect the kids from anything, especially legitimate concerns, then you canât expect some mechanism to magically do all that parenting for you. It can help but not be the parent when the parent thinks itâs too inconvenient to actually do some parenting.
A phone isn't going to run off the road and kill 7 people. This is nonsense and you know it.
And yes, phones are something parents do "just" share with their kids because nobody is bizarre enough to look at a phone the same way as a gun or a car. It's the YouTube device that can talk to grandma. All you have to do to see proof that it's something people "just" share is to walk into a grocery store and look at parents pushing kids in carts while those kids watch videos. 25 years ago those phones were Game Boys. Nobody is seeing them as a gun. That's the most disconnected from reality take I've seen in my life.
Whats the diff between today giving you phone to your 8-year and making sure /having trust that they do not use it to e.g. order a new toy from Amazon and tomorrow that he is not using to verify they are an adult?
I mean, most things today (like accessing porn, buying alcohol) do not require any extra age verification. They can just do it using your phone/accounts.
Not everyone views their child as an enemy that just happens to be in close quarters with them. Most people trust their kids to generally not do bad things. People keep knives in their kitchen and kids, explain the danger, and kids are generally responsible enough to not play with them.
If this is a concept that you can't grasp, then words will never convey it. It's simply a detachment from reality to think people are viewing their phones as a loaded gun and their child as someone hellbent on betraying them and causing massive societal damage.
The phone is the YouTube device. If they get a notification that their kid ordered from Amazon, they'll cancel the order and tell their kid not to do it again. It's seriously that simple. Just go and talk to a parent. They'll think viewing their phones as a WMD is insane.
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.
On top of the pretty bad article, HN finds the âcanât winâ scenario again. Thereâs no age verification scheme that will survive âcollusionâ, thatâs 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 canât hack the device and replace the reference sample. /s
> "Letâs 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 âunlock your appâ. Thatâs a lot of legwork the adult has to do so the child can âtrickâ 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?
These are the sources cited by the article:
| "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."
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 itâs 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.
Itâs 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
> 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?
> 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?
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.
The title of the original article seems wrong, they didn't launch the app, they published the source code ahead of the launch.
> "Letâs 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.
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.
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.
You're competing with photos of a drivers license of a photo.
Not sure if you're joking or not, but Denmark have had people show an edited screenshot of the drivers license app, to get into clubs or buy alcohol.
I think they "fixed" it. I think it has some effect now that only works if you tilt the phone.
Bouncer love it, when someone says "oh sorry, I forgot my ID, can you let me in anyway?" they just tell them to download the app :)
I don't know about other countries, but here it requires your passport or actual drivers license, and a 12 or 24 hour wait, to actually activate the drivers license app.
Mhh, maybe it was the Sundhedskortet app? But that does not have a photo.
To be honest I just overhead the bouncer talking about them liking the app. Maybe I misheard it.
How does the nephew unlock the phone and app?
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).
"Letâs 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??
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.
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.
That's not reality for many of us. I don't consider my phone a secure device by any means. It has nothing on it that I'd regard as something I'd need to guard against my family.
I know a fair number of especially elderly people who want to disable PIN and bio-metrics from their phone, because they view it as a pain to deal with.
PINs can also be guessed or someone might look you over the shoulder and steal it that way. Many phones still doesn't have biometrics, or people don't want to use it.
Our realities might be different, but in my reality a cell phone, which you almost by definition brings with you out in the world, should never be considered a secure device.
Oh man, if the kid gets hold of both of their parents phones with login, they could divorce them. I don't have kids yet, so this might change, but I would not give them login and / or unsupervised access.
I don't think you can guess pins, as the phones locks after a few failed attempts.
You keep using the term âsecureâ that it sounds like you think education is like a prison sentence. Youâre not doing this for security but for safety. A stair gate or drawer child-proofing lock are by no means secure but you use them anyway for the childâs safety.
You canât just leave every dangerous thing out in the open because you âview it as a pain to deal withâ storing them safely and then blame everyone else for the situation that follows.
Our realities might be different but in my reality if you put 0 (zero) effort to keep some critical things safely away from your child because itâs too much of a hassle to do it, or theyâll get around that anyway, etc. then youâre failing your children.
You make it sound like having a phone in public is basically "open carry" which is absolute nonsense.
What do you have on your phone that's dangerous? Phones aren't safety device, and they shouldn't be turned into one.
You make it sound like you put no effort in understanding my comment and just followed up with whatever supported your view.
If you have anything on your phone that should be off limits to your child but make no effort to ensure that (give them the phone, no passwords, no supervision) because itâs too inconvenient you are failing the child. Can I put it in simpler words?
> What do you have on your phone that's dangerous?
For one, the phone itself since staring into a small screen at god knows what because supervising them is a chore is bad for anything you can imagine, from eyes, to posture, to brain development. But also my credit card numbers. All my passwords. Hardcore porn. Facebook and TikTok. The app that delivers booze to my doorstep. 50 shades of grey (the book and the movie). X (Twitter), I left the worst for last.
It doesnât matter, the discussion is about age verification for things that a child should be kept away from, whatever that is. If youâre trying to protect the kids from anything, especially legitimate concerns, then you canât expect some mechanism to magically do all that parenting for you. It can help but not be the parent when the parent thinks itâs too inconvenient to actually do some parenting.
A phone isn't going to run off the road and kill 7 people. This is nonsense and you know it.
And yes, phones are something parents do "just" share with their kids because nobody is bizarre enough to look at a phone the same way as a gun or a car. It's the YouTube device that can talk to grandma. All you have to do to see proof that it's something people "just" share is to walk into a grocery store and look at parents pushing kids in carts while those kids watch videos. 25 years ago those phones were Game Boys. Nobody is seeing them as a gun. That's the most disconnected from reality take I've seen in my life.
Whats the diff between today giving you phone to your 8-year and making sure /having trust that they do not use it to e.g. order a new toy from Amazon and tomorrow that he is not using to verify they are an adult? I mean, most things today (like accessing porn, buying alcohol) do not require any extra age verification. They can just do it using your phone/accounts.
Not everyone views their child as an enemy that just happens to be in close quarters with them. Most people trust their kids to generally not do bad things. People keep knives in their kitchen and kids, explain the danger, and kids are generally responsible enough to not play with them.
If this is a concept that you can't grasp, then words will never convey it. It's simply a detachment from reality to think people are viewing their phones as a loaded gun and their child as someone hellbent on betraying them and causing massive societal damage.
The phone is the YouTube device. If they get a notification that their kid ordered from Amazon, they'll cancel the order and tell their kid not to do it again. It's seriously that simple. Just go and talk to a parent. They'll think viewing their phones as a WMD is insane.
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.
The Solution: constant face tracking /s
On top of the pretty bad article, HN finds the âcanât winâ scenario again. Thereâs no age verification scheme that will survive âcollusionâ, thatâs 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 canât hack the device and replace the reference sample. /s
> "Letâs 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 âunlock your appâ. Thatâs a lot of legwork the adult has to do so the child can âtrickâ 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?