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Bypass Behavior

The situation with requiring age-verification to visit a site and they way the site operator is responding to it is interesting. They just won't operate in the states which have such requirements. That is the least complex solution for the problem without creating new data breach risks. This story made me think about ways in which the age verification requirements could be extended to other areas - often with good intent. Parents may want any number of sites to be made inaccessible to their kids. This is not inherently a bad idea. 

But if those site operators take a page from PH's book, they will simply stop operating in those states knowing full well that the kid's that are meant to be protected will come via VPN. So the problem remains unsolved as far as the parent is concerned. A more effective way as the story notes is to make the blocking device based. The parent can buy a device that is child safety built in at the hardware and operating system level so that it would be nearly impossible to bypass the safeguards for the vast majority of kids no matter how motivated and ingenious they are. It would create the right incentives for them to earn the rights to a "normal" device. 

When regulators shoot from the hip and try to create a regime that is punitive but does not offer smart, well thought through alternatives, they hurt they very section of the population they mean to protect. Time after time, we see how this story ends but regulators go about their business no lessons learned from the past.

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