Aristotle/Integrity: El Da de los Muertos
Second Life users have found a way to deal with Aristotle/Integrity's age-verification service (who's non-USA failure rates seem to be awfully high, and who's data may be a touch less than comprehensive) and a straightforward and easy way to get themselves verified.
Famous people and dead people. Also famous, dead people. In fact, people are having more success verifying their accounts with the credentials of the deceased than with the living.
Reportedly, the best success rates for the verification service are to use credentials like, for example, dead rapper Tupac Shakur, Anna Nicole Smith, or just about any other dead person (famous or otherwise) from the public lists available on the web. Success rates are apparently higher, the longer the person has been deceased, and if they had a USA address/residency.
We hear that Paris Hilton may be a popular choice also - though she's not actually dead - and, of course, two minutes with your Dad's wallet while he's mowing the lawn will get you age-verified if you're in the USA.
The verification page requires you to confirm that "The information that I am providing is true and correct, and I consent to its verification against public records or government-issued identification."
Notably it does not require you to warrant that the information is actually yours. This might be considered something of an oversight.
How many people have used false (or deceased) credentials to age-verify? Maybe a whole lot. Potentially even most of them. There's no way for us to tell.
If the data used for verification is not in fact stored - as we have been assured multiple times by both Linden Lab and Aristotle/Integrity - then there's no way for them to tell either, is there?
That would seem to indicate that there's no way to trust a verified user. In fact, given the odds, you might feel that verified users are actually less trustworthy than unverified ones. Certainly some people already feel that way.
As one user put it, "I see dead people. All the time. They're everywhere."
