Malik wrote:

I've come across many sites, that request you to enter your age before you're able to view a particular site. […]
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I've come across many sites, that request you to enter your age before you're able to view a particular site.

I'm just wondering :

1. What is the purpose of this?

2. Even a 10-year old kid can "create" his birthday there to view the site if he wants to. How can entering your age in an open, non-verifiable manner deter whatever reason it existed in the first place?

3. Are there any other reasons for this?

From what I can understand, it's a matter of protecting the rights of the poster/hoster of the said websites. Something like "we con't be responsible, if a minor is viewing this page - the minor falsified his age" sort of thingy. Am I right?

And maybe to circumvent any possible lashes from parents / guardians of minors who visited the sites, just in case they wanted to initiate a lawsuit or something? Just to safeguard the company/host, I guess?

EDIT : Last night I entered my age before seeing a game site at Steam. So, remembered to post this topic. And is there a reason to avoid entering your actual age? Is it okay to change your actual birth date there? Again it's too "open" and doesn't require a formal validation of the entered age. I'm just wondering what's all this about.

The sites of companies that produce tobacco products and alcoholic beverages have these and I guess it does relieve them of legal liability because they can check the log of everyone who viewed the site and tell authorities that according to the log, everyone who viewed the site was of legal age.

As others have said, I think it's just legal gymnastics. It's not verifiable, but they don't really care as long as you've gone "on record" and said you were the right age.

I have noticed a lot of game developers are going this route recently with Mature rated titles. They don't want to get nailed I suppose.

Yeah, it's all about covering their asses. Especially in the US, where lawsuits have become the national pastime... companies have to at least make a showing of diligence in preventing anyone from being injured or offended.

When my father didn't want me to do something, he'd come to my bedroom and hang his belt on the doorknob, which was generally enough to get the message across. Now kids are getting away with too much thanks to laid-back, pussyass, irresponsible parenting.

Sure, a child can easily override an age gate.

But the purpose of the age gate is not to block underage children from viewing such material, because there's no fail-safe way to do that over the internet. Age gates are mostly there to alert parents who should be monitoring their children's internet activity and helps to stall the process of viewing mature content long enough so that if there is a parent monitoring, they can take control of the situation.

Besides, not every child is going to intentionally find a way to break through an age gate. :P

There's ultimately no reliable way to age-gate anything on the internet. The best you can do is mark stuff appropriately and give sufficient warning.

At some point there may be a National Age Verification System for the Internet. You show proof of your identity and age and receive a unique ID code which you input into a site that asks for age verification. The site would verify once that the person's age is over 18 or 21 and then that user could use the site any time he or she wanted to. What kind of proof of identity needed would probably be something like a driver's license, state ID card or passport. Since this is the internet, you would need to upload a color photo of the item to the System.

Just a thought

if only everybody lived in the same country with the same rules.

People sure are lawsuit happy when in comes to gaming so it's certainly a form of legal protection. I suspect it's also used for marketing as a way of polling what sort of age demographic is interested in their site.

Great Hierophant wrote:

At some point there may be a National Age Verification System for the Internet. You show proof of your identity and age and receive a unique ID code which you input into a site that asks for age verification. The site would verify once that the person's age is over 18 or 21 and then that user could use the site any time he or she wanted to. What kind of proof of identity needed would probably be something like a driver's license, state ID card or passport. Since this is the internet, you would need to upload a color photo of the item to the System.

Just a thought

In my book, there is a tremendous cost associated with that. Personal privacy has already been thrown out the window with all of the relational databases we inevitably end up in. An internet ID would just kill that completely.

A system similar to bitcoin could be used to get around that.

This one is my favorite:

I don't think enough time has gone by for objects this mundane to be effective, but I guess it's some sort of joke? I just asked my 8yo nephew and he immediately identified the tape, and on the top of that, if you crop the image and upload it to tineye, that's 13 websites telling you what it is.

I remember this early Larry game asking you a bunch of questions related to women which only someone old enough to have successfully dated one, would have been able to answer with any degree of certainty. It was clever enough to fool children and horny teens alike 😀

Yeah larry questions were tough 😀

Yeah, some questions from Larry games were tough. Although the questions tried to extract how much of adult matters one knows, some questions were focused on the American culture and celebrities, which can be daunting to actual adults staying in Asian countries, and those europeans who don't involve much in american entertainment. And this was before the internet explosion, and getting answers can be actually tough, even if the player is an adult.

Edit : And hence, the availability of Ctrl+Alt+X (or was that Ctrl+Shift+X - can't remember) was really a boon!

The Larry questions were difficult for persons trying to play the games today without a good knowledge of American history and popular culture of the 60s-mid 80s. These things a reasonably well-informed adult like Al Lowe would know but a child probably would not.

Great Hierophant wrote:

These things a reasonably well-informed adult like Al Lowe would know but a child probably would not.

Odd that it doesn't accept the answer for "O. J. Simpson is - under indictment." I'd think even a child knows that much about history.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

Great Hierophant wrote:

These things a reasonably well-informed adult like Al Lowe would know but a child probably would not.

Odd that it doesn't accept the answer for "O. J. Simpson is - under indictment." I'd think even a child knows that much about history.

Did you try "Guilty"?

sliderider wrote:

Did you try "Guilty"?

Not an option.

Another odd one.
If you answer "The world is - flat." Does that mean you're too old too play the game?

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

Not an option. […]
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sliderider wrote:

Did you try "Guilty"?

Not an option.

Another odd one.
If you answer "The world is - flat." Does that mean you're too old too play the game?

That would actually mean you're too stupid for anything 😁