Discord has announced that it's rolling out age verification checks globally from March – and the decision has sparked fury from many privacy-conscious users.
Sorry if I misread your post, but hopefully this comment of mine is relevant:
In my humble opinion, the digital wallet is horrible, because as far as I can tell 1. it requires Google device attestation so all custom ROMs are out and to be a citizen you can apparently no longer own your device, 2. unless you use iOS or Android you’re apparently not a citizen and you can’t e.g. purely use Linux (this is as far as I know not the case with the German AusweisApp), 3. once everyone is used to using some citizen app like that, I feel like a fascist government could easily tie it to a social score or other authoritarian measures bewyond the age verification. 4. There is a privacy friendly alternative approach for age verification anyway, that most governments seem to conveniently be ignoring: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115
Of course a close eye must be kept on this but ffs this is miles better compared to the usual practise of copying ID documents in shops or using the PostIdent system and beats any 3rd fishy party provider - and that includes device manufacturers.
Same for the upcoming Wallet asking for open and established standards.
And just because it might beat PostIdent, doesn’t mean it’s sane to give up online anonymity for age checks everywhere. The EU claims the wallet will allow anonymous age checks, but if they ever tracked you, pretty sure you wouldn’t know.
This is not how remote attestation works. It’s the whole point of the age verification of the wallet that such meta data doesn’t have to be stored. The data submitted is transparent and can be viewed before accepting the verification. It’s in the core concept that this process is unlinkable and the goal is to implement this with ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof) mechanisms.
That is in the technical spec for this proposal. It is designed for exactly this kind of requested online anonymity.
Does this have to be watched? Absolutely Yes. What you’re doing here is spreading FUD though without any proof whatsoever just because “iTs fRoM tHe gOv”. Now I don’t know your frame of reference and it’s probably a good idea to keep a healthy level of mistrust in place but(!) the EU does a lot of things correct and I take this over any system designed by a private company that is definitely always only interested in our best: money.
The eID can do this EU wide already but it’s usage is regulated and that’s not something a company wants to accept. The EU Digital Identity Wallet would hit the spot even more, since it’s very privacy friendly: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EUDIGITALIDENTITYWALLET/pages/930450954/The+Age+Verification+Manual
That’s still in testing though and even less in the interest of a company that wants to extract as much user data as possible.
Sorry if I misread your post, but hopefully this comment of mine is relevant:
In my humble opinion, the digital wallet is horrible, because as far as I can tell 1. it requires Google device attestation so all custom ROMs are out and to be a citizen you can apparently no longer own your device, 2. unless you use iOS or Android you’re apparently not a citizen and you can’t e.g. purely use Linux (this is as far as I know not the case with the German AusweisApp), 3. once everyone is used to using some citizen app like that, I feel like a fascist government could easily tie it to a social score or other authoritarian measures bewyond the age verification. 4. There is a privacy friendly alternative approach for age verification anyway, that most governments seem to conveniently be ignoring: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115
Also see here on the EU apparently trying to make this mandatory: https://leminal.space/post/31858818/21120139
Not exactly sure what you mean by this. I know for a fact that AusweisApp2 works fine on e.g. Linux and there is this: https://www.ausweisapp.bund.de/open-source-software
Of course a close eye must be kept on this but ffs this is miles better compared to the usual practise of copying ID documents in shops or using the PostIdent system and beats any 3rd fishy party provider - and that includes device manufacturers.
Same for the upcoming Wallet asking for open and established standards.
I am referring to the EU Wallet age verification app: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui/ Sorry that I forgot to link it.
And just because it might beat PostIdent, doesn’t mean it’s sane to give up online anonymity for age checks everywhere. The EU claims the wallet will allow anonymous age checks, but if they ever tracked you, pretty sure you wouldn’t know.
This is not how remote attestation works. It’s the whole point of the age verification of the wallet that such meta data doesn’t have to be stored. The data submitted is transparent and can be viewed before accepting the verification. It’s in the core concept that this process is unlinkable and the goal is to implement this with ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof) mechanisms.
That is in the technical spec for this proposal. It is designed for exactly this kind of requested online anonymity.
Does this have to be watched? Absolutely Yes. What you’re doing here is spreading FUD though without any proof whatsoever just because “iTs fRoM tHe gOv”. Now I don’t know your frame of reference and it’s probably a good idea to keep a healthy level of mistrust in place but(!) the EU does a lot of things correct and I take this over any system designed by a private company that is definitely always only interested in our best: money.