I agree. I’ll actually contact the national Consumer Policies department and ask if this is at all legal.

The fundamental problem is that age verification is bullshit. So let’s not normalize it. It must be fought, on all fronts, including the FOSS front.

Indeed I wonder if that kind of keyboard check is even legal - personally I feel it as a breach of my privacy, none of their fucking business what kind of input method I use. (If anyone here is knowledgeable about such matters, please let me know!)

I’ve been having similar turd-kind encounters with bank apps even within Android. I use the egregious Heliboard from F-droid, and my bank app refused to start because I use an “untrusted keyboard” – funny as it’s way more trustworthy that Gboard or Microslop board apps. Turns out the apps of all banks in my country are like that. So now I simply access the bank via the browser instead. Fuck their apps.

But I understand that the browser solution may not work for everyone :(

Partly this problem comes from incompetence of the app’s developers, partly for shifting responsibility: it seems to me that they let Play Store do the checks, so if any hacking happens they can blame Play Store. And there’s also the modern motto: “if you want to make an app secure, make it unusable”. Even better I’d then say “don’t make it at all”! – there, security-problem fully solved.

Put pressure on banks would be best. Possibly one could also play a “disability” card: I must use such-and-such app or OS owing to visual impairment, say. Or collect signatures for a petition… but I imagine we’re a very small minority.

As a protest in my case I changed bank a couple of times.

But thank you for the USB-ADB tip! I’ll use it when I switch to GrapheneOS.

I understand. Be aware that this can be quite a limiting factor, more than you think. The need to think about home servers starts to clash with the statement that

It was built from day one to be usable by anyone, with zero tech background required.

Possibly. That’s up to your distro. However, consider that EU as well is starting to speak about age verification. It’s quite clear that the whole “West” aspires to be more like Russia and China.

Thank you for the explanation. But I don’t understand how it can work if:

1. I send a message while my contact is offline,
2. then I go offline,
3. my contact comes back online while I’m still offline.

The message needs to be somewhere in between. This is a situation that occurs quite often when you message with people in very different time zones.

Nobody in the middle. No server storing anything. No company analyzing anything

[…]

In deferred mode, it works just like regular email. Meaning your contact doesn’t need to be online when you send the message. Your contact will get it automatically once they come online.

So I can’t send a message while my contact is offline, then go offline myself, and expect that my contact will receive it when they go online? This is quite limiting.

How is PeerBox different from Delta Chat?

I wish, but I’m not so sure. Look at what happened with the Californian age-verification laws and Systemd for example. Some (arsehole, in my personal opinion) FOSS developers hurried up and bent over backwards to start complying. We’ll probably end up having “Linux” distros that will comply, and Linux distros, probably distributed via secret channels, that won’t.

Good places might be /c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com /c/privacy@lemmy.world /c/privacy@lemmy.ca

The crucial point in this new press release is the requirement for “operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.”

Very true:

But when technologists tell policymakers this, they tell us that they have every confidence in our ingenuity, and also, they can’t be certain we’re not telling a Zuck-style fable about how the stuff we merely disprefer is actually impossible. They tell us to NERD HARDER!

NERD HARDER! is the answer every time a politician gets a technological idée-fixe about how to solve a social problem by creating a technology that can’t exist.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers

Could you post this on the privacy community? I had never heard about this arsehole.

From the press release [my emphasis]:

Require operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.

We surely need to send protest emails and letters to legislators and government representatives – as citizens did in EU for the “chat control” proposals – and organize protest marches, strikes, and so on.

But yes, if the regime behaves more and more like a Russian state, rather than a democracy, and doesn’t care about citizens’ protests, then “violent uprising” becomes almost a moral imperative. “Democracy” means “government by the people”, and it’s we people who must make sure no one takes the government out of our hands; nobody else can do that for us.

🤝

From the press release [my emphasis]:

Require operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.

permanent worldwide injunction

During our in-person visa appointment in Seattle, a shooting involving CBP occurred just a few parking spaces from where we normally park for medical outpatient visits back in Portland. It was covered by the news internationally and you may have read about it. Moments like that have a way of clarifying what matters and how urgently change can feel necessary.

Our visas were approved quickly, which we’re grateful for. We’ll be spending the next year in France, where my wife has other Tibetan family. I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the language and culture and to taking that responsibility seriously. Learning French in mid-life will be humbling, but I’m ready to give it my full focus.

Sounds like a splendid person.

It’s also a smart move considering that, with age-verification laws advancing, it looks like a good part of the Linux world will become with time another instrument of mass surveillance.

entered a permanent worldwide injunction