consumer451 | Hacker News

Comment by consumer451 | original | Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

[−]consumer451 · 2026-07-02 Thu 01:33 UTC · link

Assuming that perfect is the enemy of good, this is still better than all the proposed alternatives, isn't it?

[−]coppsilgold · 2026-07-02 Thu 01:39 UTC · link

With ZKP age verification, services will not be able to track you without help from the CA. The CA will not be able to track you without help from the services. Both will contain the necessary information in their databases that when combined deanonymize you. The CA is the central authority/certificate authority.

So you should assume the government can track you, because you should assume both will be streaming those identifiers to it.

[−]consumer451 · 2026-07-02 Thu 02:09 UTC · link

Yes, there is one party that can track you, which in some countries is still slightly trusted.

Ideally, no age verification would be required or proposed. However, if it is, this implementation should be the base minimum, should it not?

This is a gazillion percent better than a foreign corporation being in charge, isn't it?

[−]ekr____ · 2026-07-02 Thu 04:03 UTC · link

This isn't correct. With ZKP-based systems even the CA can't track you. That's the "zero-knowledge" part.

[−]nubg · 2026-07-02 Thu 06:40 UTC · link

but how is that possible? that even the CA cannot track you?

[−]krupan · 2026-07-02 Thu 02:45 UTC · link

Better than no age verification (and therefore, privacy) coupled with parents doing their job?

[−]consumer451 · 2026-07-02 Thu 02:49 UTC · link

That would be ideal. However, this is tech proposal which takes so much of the slop out of the entire thing. With this implementation, there is no profit in it, unless your government is directly cooperating, aka a scandal in many countries.