Google Demanded My Drivers Lic Before Letting Me Read an Article
2025-10-24
ME: Yesterday I tried to read an article and google blocked me demanding I upload my driver’s license, passport, or other information to prove my age (I declined). What was that all about?
GoogleAI: The prompt for age verification is due to Google's new system, which uses AI to estimate users' ages to comply with a global push for online age-verification laws. This system may flag adult users as minors, restricting access to certain content until their age is confirmed with a government ID, credit card, or a selfie.
How Google's AI age verification works
• AI age estimation: Google's system analyzes user activity, such as search history and YouTube viewing habits, to estimate a user's age.
• Widespread enforcement: While initially affecting only a "small set" of users, this system is now rolling out more widely and affecting multiple Google services, including Search, YouTube, and the Google Play Store.
• Restricted content: When the AI flags an account as potentially belonging to someone underage, it applies the same restrictions as if the user had self-identified as a minor. This includes turning on SafeSearch and restricting access to mature content.
• Incorrect flagging: The system is not foolproof and has been known to incorrectly flag adult users, causing them to be locked out of content they previously accessed without issue.
Your options for age verification If your account was incorrectly flagged, you can verify your age using one of Google's approved methods:
• Government ID: Upload a photo of a government-issued ID, like a driver's license or passport. Google states it stores these documents securely and deletes them after your age has been successfully verified.
• Credit card: Provide your credit card details to confirm your age. Any authorization is temporary and will be fully refunded.
• Selfie: Use a selfie-based verification service.
Privacy concerns and context
For users who are hesitant to provide private documents to a large tech company, this situation presents a privacy conflict. While it's Google's official process, providing personal information is a risk many users are unwilling to take.
This initiative is driven by pressure from lawmakers in various countries, including the U.S. and U.K., who are pushing for stricter age-verification measures to protect minors online. However, this is also a highly debated issue, with concerns raised about the impact on adult users' privacy and freedom of access to information.
Years and years ago, Facebook asked me for a picture of my passport when I was trying to recover my password. Obviously, I said, "No". I eventually found the password, but I stopped using Facebook shortly afterwards anyways.
The Internet used to be a domain of handles and alter-egos. Anonymity was cherished because it protected us from (then) mostly imaginary evils. Now that those evils exist, are legion, and are being traded on NASDAQ, we are teaching children to surrender their anonymity and live without masks in a digital panopticon.
We need to revive old-school handles for children and teach them the value of anonymity.
Today facebook asks for a 3D scan of your face to create an account… no way!
What's their reason?
Preventing fake accounts and ban evasion presumably. Considering the only use case for Facebook these days is Marketplace, I’m not entirely against them cracking down on scammers.
I can't tell you how many companies have sent me letters in the mail about data breaches leaking my personal informaiton.
Traded on Nasdaq - you mean which companies? NSO Group ? Those people will get on your phone even without you sharing your photos
If you're asking which company specifically, you missed the point.
That’s a worrying precedent. Age-verification laws were meant to protect minors, not force every adult to hand over government IDs just to read content. AI-based estimation sounds efficient in theory, but when it misfires, it turns into surveillance by default. The line between safety and overreach is getting thinner by the day.
No way in Hades would I upload a copy of sensitive personal documentation like a driver's license or a passport to the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Antropic or even privacy-respecting Apple.
No. Not gonna happen.
Isn't it possible that they already have it?
Lol. Yea they already have it
No article is worth reading that compromises your privacy or security.
I take the same approach with aggressive paywalls. Decline and move on.
As someone from Russia this is a bit scary. Right now Google doesn't have a reason to care what I am (I don't pay Google) but if I give them my ID I can imagine google permabanning me from everything any moment if their lawyers get slightly more paranoid than now...
What country are you in and what was the article?
OP Here:
I posted because of the very obvious effort to remove anonymity from the internet. BTW, my post is a copy of my inquiry to Google AI and the AI response.
By way of context of the request:
I am from the USA. I do not recall the article. I didn't read it because there was no way I was going to provide the authentication Google demanded. I was using Chrome as the browser at the time. I was also logged into my Chrome account. I am 73 years old btw.
I found it interesting that a selfie was ok. There have been sites for several years now that will generate faces of imaginary people. I wonder if that will work.
I’m curious how old your Google account is?
Mine goes back to the Gmail invite days, around 20 years ago. I’m wondering if account age alone would prove I’m now over 18. Of course, I have YouTube Premium, so they already have my credit card. I can’t imagine uploading my ID. That’s a bridge too far.
Just a side note here...
Google knows precisely who you are, if you have a cell phone and give them the number. Telcos boast about this, and sell that data for a price.
The only way to avoid this, is to buy a sim card anonymously, phone anonymously, and only pay cash to top up the minutes. The second you pay with a card for minutes, the telco links that and your ID is known.
And of course, if you use Google services on your phone, no way is your ID concealed for long.
This effort cancels out as soon as you give your mobile number to pretty much anyone. Most people have contacts stored at Google, so friends add your number with name, and Google again knows.
Google doesn't care about raw ID much, it cares about networks of people. Who you know, and who has who as contacts says a lot.
Anyhow. Point is, never give your phone number to anyone or you are never anonymous.
I cancelled my only cellular account 11 years ago. Maybe Google's algorithm targeted my account as not having identified my cellular footprint they assume I must have?
This sounds very plausible. If I had to make a list of ways to identify a child, not yet having a cell phone would likely be on that list. I think I’d assume older people without one would be those who have limited internet activity, or none at all.
I don’t like this assumption, but so many things these days assume a mobile phone, and even a smartphone, that it seems hard not to have one. I need one just to login to my laptop for work. On top of that, a significant number of businesses I need to interact with have automatically opted me in to 2FA using text messaging. QR code scanning is being required more and more, even just to go out to eat.
I just looked at my account info and didn't see a date of creation. I did see that I last changed my password in 2020. I'm going to guess that's when I created that account.
You might be able to find it by searching for the 'Welcome to Gmail' email in your archives.
AFAIK it is also returned when you download your Google data archive.
They say selfie, but it's typically interactive. They'll make you move your camera forward/backward, turn your head to the side, maybe even open your mouth.
Not really, they’ll have a 3D model of your head and if the camera and light are good then they’ll have a clean bio data of you. Many apps in Asia require you to take front and sides of your face for “biometrics verification” like this
WTF?
So will a bigger chunk of the web now become inaccessible to incognito mode or user agents browsing without recognized provenance?
In a word, yes.
Longer answer:
Any content the moral panic at the time is panicking about will require age verification. Only things moral panickers believe is child-appropriate will be accessible without it.
This includes forums. If people can interact with each other, one of them miiiiiight be a child (no matter the forum's topic), and the other miiiiight be a pedophile. Therefore, ALL forums will be obliged by law to age-verify their users for them to be able to even read user submissions, this one here being a prime candidate.
And, note, this is a bipartisan effort in the US. All proposed bills are supported by Democrats and Republicans. Google is merely doing it on their own before the relevant laws are approved, so as to be ready when everyone starts struggling to become compliant or have their sites shutdown.
Google knows how old you are.
It's annoying how much lately they pretend this isn't true with this age gating on YouTube and such. But it's literally their job to identify you personally and put you into that age bucket.
Is it not possible that they're pretty bad at "literally their job"? It would definitely be in their interest to misrepresent the accuracy of their ad targeting.
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