I don’t know if I’m in the right place to talk about this, if I’m not please correct me.
First, I think age verification is the first step towards making VRChat something much bigger and safer within virtual reality, I believe it will be the social introduction of an almost ideal “metaverse” for future generations. Therefore, I would like to be part of the initial testers of this update, having access to age verification and give more feedback about it. 
yo is there a way I could Sign up for this “Age verification Update”
I’ve had a lot of people doing some not so nice things in my VRC world and I would like to be able to make my world a safer place for adults and children alike
if anybody from the VRC team would like to reach out to me then my discord is: ashtenrec
This is a big step and all but i want to know if anyone on the part of the team working on this can explain the policy and duration for the partnership with persona for user id and selfie sharing and retention length, i just want to make sure they indefinately retain a copy of my id and having a connection to my account for the sake of security especially during a data breach because it is always a posibility
Hey! We forgot to link the form on the video originally (whoopsie) but we added it now. If you go to the description of the video you can apply there, sorry for the confusion!
Click here to go to the google forms for quicker access, apply if you have a group that runs events!
Looking at the Persona company that you’re using for this feature.
You state that VRChat does not receive any information other than the verified date of birth from Persona, however, reading their help page here, it states that:
“How do we access the information collected by Persona?
All information from Persona’s verifications (e.g. the verification results, verification checks, documents, reports, etc) can be retrieved via API. Please see our API for more information. You will also have access to the Persona Dashboard where you can view information from your end users’ verifications and export this information from the Dashboard itself.”
and:
“Can Persona send us the personally identifiable information (PII) provided by individuals (e.g. Name, DOB, address)?
Yes, in the API / Configuration section of the under “Enabled API attributes” you can specify the PII you’d like to retrieve via the API. By default, we do not expose the attributes directly provided by individuals (e.g. name, birthdate, address) via API for data privacy reasons.”
Can you tell us more of how the collection system works, such as if it:
I’m personally slightly concerned about the use of Persona for age verification. The system is finicky to deal with at times, especially for anyone with a lower end phone camera, and it’s also been shown many times in the past to be easily exploited.
Such as when Roblox added it as their age verification system and not only were children still easily gaining access to the means to be verified, and therefore its voicechats, but there had also been a big trend of videos of people literally using placeholder licenses/IDs as well as completely outrageous ones, like one that was literally shown on Spongebob Squarepants as a part of the gag of the episode (can’t remember which off the top of my head) and managed to pass as a valid ID under Persona.
I agree in principle with the idea of age verification, but Persona is not a good choice. They seem exceptionally invasive in their data collection, give themselves very broad leeway to redistribute your data and to – and collect it from other third parties. They’re not people I would want to send copies of any government IDs to, never mind allow to gather biometrics on me.
Very nicely of them, they list their subprocessors https://withpersona.com/customer-documents/subprocessors
But it doesn’t seem like this is an exclusive list of who they’re sharing your data to. You’re also consenting to all of these subprocessors using your data however they like. One of their subprocessors is their own Canadian business, which I can’t readily find a privacy policy or terms of service for anywhere, but I’m sure that anything they can’t do with this privacy policy, they’ll be able to do with that one, otherwise they’d make it easy to find.
And as is typical, there’s an arbitration clause, and you can’t be party in a class action when they or someone they shared your data to inevitably loses their treasure trove of data on you.
Age verification has to be at least a little invasive, but it doesn’t have to be this invasive, and you don’t have to cede this many of your rights to do it.
Please pick a better vendor for age verification
Persona? … This is very Vile. Extremely shady. And lots of things said in the video are incorrect/lies. Still not corrected in the vid.
I heard enough, this is awful.
Heyo! I had a question about verifying ages and what not. Say you have a Main account on Vrchat that you verify your age on.
Would you then be able to Verify again on an alternate account using that same ID? I personally have two accounts, one That I lounge around in with certain friends… Then another account I use for content creation and a second friend group to keep separated.
I want to know if I use my ID on one account to verify it’s age, am I shit out of luck on that second account?
from what i have read Persona doesn’t seem like a good option. vrchat please change the company that will be worked with.
Sir, Lady; (Otter_oasis and Tsukare) you’ve hit the nail right on the head.
i’m all in for being verified 18+ (fuck… im in my thirties, lol) and the application of the “lobby gating” is what i have expected in terms of implementation. i think it leaves some unspoken stuff on the sidelines, but it at least is a step in the right direction.
[…]
i’m hoping to see a better solution for verification that doesnt use a third party company (Personna) which has been brought to court over misuse of private data. (i’ve seen a court report, and heard of things like using PII + facial geometry data to train an AI…)
this is more than the usual “show your ID to the bouncer” deal. and i’m not super keen to trust Personna with my driver license, passport, face geometry or… you know… anything that can facilitate some threat actor to commit identity fraud.
i have lived this once, paid a big price (thousands of dollars) and i don’t intent on having it happen again, out of pure lazyness or convenience.
respectfully, i’m all in for age verification, but i think we are like… 80% the way of an acceptable solution that respects the user privacy; while also puts confidence that the user is of legal age. i understand that some people find it normal and are comfortable, and some others do not.
(some more food for thoughts, originally was baked into the thread but it took a huge detour, so i put it in the footnote instead, for those who would like additionnal insights/context)
Let's be honest the privacy concerns are real.
and the way the news delivery was.... let's just say not the best it could have been. lots of "mistakes" in the video, subtle lack of transparency. i'm not gonna point them out, i'm not here to point/shame the staff. i;m sure the VRC Staff who made the video had the best intentions, and they are in the hot seat now...
but if you pay attention and read what is being brought in this thread and others, you'll know what i mean. i can understand some people having distrust after it all.
I will give the team the benefit of the doubt because this is a complex issue to navigate and implement.
and objectively; i understand they probably took a long time to think about it, they should have taken an extra week/month to craft the delivery a little better :P
It’d be nice if I could use my steam account for age verification. 21 years of service, no bans on the account…
Is there a way to know which countries will be covered by Persona for VRC age verification ? I have some friends who are in places that do not seem to be covered, but the info comes from linkedin, not from Persona or VRC.
In the case where someone would be outside of the countries covered by Persona, does the VRC team have plans to contract other providers to fill the blank areas ?
I noticed a few countries missing.
United States, Canada, Mexico
Also Russia, South Korea, North Korea
China, Egypt, India, South Africa, Vatican City
Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago.
Tempted to also mention Greenland and Puerto Rico, although those likely fall under other countries.
It’s been a fun game looking at that list thinking of countries and seeing most of them listed. Based on what I was able to come up with, I can’t exactly be concerned about my country not being listed.
I am of course very interested if you’re in a country that is neither listed by linked in, nor by my post. I have missed a decent number of countries.
Edit: LinkedIn Expands ID Verification to More Regions | Social Media Today this news article mentions that for some countries LinkedIn uses a different service called clear. I have not verified sources, but my curiosity is satiated.
well, that is the list of countries that you can be verified on linkedin using Persona , it doesn’t tell if vrc wil have the same list of countries
Looks like persona will only give the list of supported countries to their customers.
I’m thinking that the list of unsupported countries is going to be just Russia
To be fair I don’t get why the are using such a shady companies for age verifications when in theory steam ore even meta i would hazard a gess is how most play vrchat which require you put in your date of birth and with steam I had to send off a verification code from a government id registration system that only gave them a yes thats his D.O.B. though meta can be slightly easier to defeat as one remembers when it was called facebook puting ones brothers date of birth so one could play farmvile so may not be the best plan to use meta
Talking about data breach’s and any concerns around that falls on def ears in regards to this. The hivemind has spoken and any criticism of it basically = bad actor or groomer. as far as the community is concerned. Im done trying to fight for the privacy rights of people who don’t care.