The original post: /r/privacy by /u/Aiden-Isik on 2025-07-23 02:39:37.

I was very sceptical of this verification system upon hearing about it, concerned that even though the sites you are visiting won’t get your personal data, the verification system would be able to collate information about all of the sites you have verified with and thus track your every move online. Usually, concerns like this turn out to be true nowadays, as we all know.

This time, I was wrong. And I couldn’t be more glad.

Upon reading the specification for the system (and a very neat infographic), I found that this is actually a decent, well-engineered, privacy preserving piece of technology!

Basically, from what I understand, how it works is to set it up, you verify your identity with the verification system, and in return you get an attestation, downloaded locally to your device. And here’s the neat part, the way it is verified is that attestation is cryptographically signed with the key of the verifier. So when you go to verify that you’re, say, over 18 on a website, you scan a QR code with the verification app, and the verification app itself will send that signed attestation to the website, which will then verify the attestation by checking if the attestation is signed by the verifier!

Unless I’m missing some critical detail, this is great, and to be honest, a privacy win, since once this system is in place it will prevent any more invasive age verification methods from being implemented, since there’s already one there.

I think we should be pushing to replicate this system in as many places as possible, to get ahead and stop the more invasive methods in their tracks. Until the next excuse for tracking rolls around, at least.

Thoughts?

Specification: https://ageverification.dev/Technical Specification/architecture-and-technical-specifications/#23-user-journey