[602] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Fun with Age Verification and "Red Band" Trailers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Wed Mar 10 01:01:49 2010
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 21:34:02 -0800
To: privacy-list@vortex.com
Message-ID: <20100310053402.GB6557@vortex.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Disposition: inline
From: privacy@vortex.com
Reply-To: PRIVACY Forum Digest mailing list <privacy@vortex.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Errors-To: privacy-bounces+privacy-forum=mit.edu@vortex.com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
( http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg03078.html )
Greetings. A regular reader of NNSquad just asked me about what they
found over at:
http://bit.ly/bT7xIH ("She's Out Of My League")
This is a promo site for the film (you guessed it) "She's Out of My
League" -- and features a "restricted" (Rated "R") trailer that
demands personal "age verification" information before letting you
proceed to view the trailer.
The requested data includes full name, zip, country, and date of
birth.
The fine print says: "I understand that I am allowed to enter the
restricted area only if I am 17 years of age or older. To verify my
age, I authorize you to confirm the accuracy of the information I have
submitted against my United States government issued ID."
However, given that the term "United States government issued ID" has
no universal meaning even in the U.S., my original assumption was that
the site is actually using one of the various highly error-prone
commercial databases to check ages. Or is it?
In fact, the party who wrote to me says that they actually entered
their info accurately (not my suggestion!) and still couldn't gain
access.
But perhaps it's actually much simpler than that. I just entered the
following info pretty much at random:
First Name: John
Last Name: Smith
Zip: 20202 USA
Birthdate: 03 02 1963
and popped right in! Sorry about that, John. And keep in mind
that I'm nowhere near 20202, either.
Let's play a game. Change the year to 1901 (wow, this guy
is sure over 17). Reject. Change it to 1951. That works fine!
Change last name to Clarke. Reject. Change last name to Bannon.
No good. Change last name to Brown. Yep, green light for that one!
As "Bomb #20" said in "Dark Star" -- "This is fun!"
By the way, on failures, part of the message reads:
"If you are receieving (sic) this page" ... Learn to spell, guys.
OK. Either I'm *really* lucky tonight or the whole thing sure looks
bogus. And for that matter, if you really wanted to see the damned
trailer anyway, you could just go to YouTube and search for "she's out
of my league red band trailer" -- and at any given time you're likely
to find at least one live one there.
'Nuff said.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
_______________________________________________
privacy mailing list
http://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy
