http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/24/verisign_age_verification_token/prin...
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/24/verisign_age_verification_token/
Now we are 8 (and this token proves it)
By Thomas C Greene (thomas.greene at theregister.co.uk)
Published Friday 24th September 2004 14:02 GMT
VeriSign announced a new USB token that verifies the ages and sexes of
children using a computer, and claimed that this will make it easier for
innocent sprouts to avoid online predators, Reuters reports.
"Chatroom lurkers who can't prove their age will stick out like sore thumbs
as more kids adopt the tokens," the wire service explained.
The so-called i-Stik USB token will provide verification of a child's age
and sex. School administrators will provide lists of students, with their
dates of birth and sexes, and VeriSign will encode that information onto
the i-Stick tokens.
The scheme will begin with a handful of schools for testing this Fall, and,
if all goes according to plan, be extended to thousands of schools starting
next Spring.
That is, assuming its glaring flaws don't become painfully evident by that
time. Most obviously, the token will not verify age or sex of the person
using it, but only of the person to whom it was issued. Anyone might be
using it, and no doubt paedos will be scrambling to get their hands on one
of their own, either through loss, theft, or bribery. Once the tokens
become popular and widely available, one can expect a brisk trade in them
on paedo bulletin boards.
(Naturally, the Feds will have to be supplied with plenty of these gizmos,
so that they can spend their days hanging out in kids' chatrooms with
better cover.)
Meanwhile, parents will be lulled further into foolish notions that an
Internet-connected PC makes for an adequate electronic babysitter. The
Internet is adult space, and there is no substitute for parental
supervision. If this scheme does anything to produce a false sense of
security among parents, then it's worse than nothing; it's actually
dangerous.
One thing that the tokens will be good for is online marketing to children.
Marketers will be able to get a more accurate sense of the ages and sexes
of young visitors to various online venues, and target them more precisely.
It will also make for decent PR and corporate image-making for VeriSign,
suggesting that the company takes the safety of children seriously. Most
importantly, it will produce a nice revenue stream from a basically
worthless product that school districts will purchase with tax dollars.
In all, it's a win/win gimmick and publicity stunt, so long as child safety
is not a criterion for judging its success. ®
Thomas C Greene is the author of Computer Security for the Home and Small
Office (http://basicsec.org), a comprehensive guide to system hardening,
malware protection, online anonymity, encryption, and data hygiene for
Windows and Linux.
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R. A. Hettinga