Personally, I can see use cases for verifying my identity:

Banking, taxes, treasurydirect, linkedin, docusign, online filing,

Right now all those are tied to my gmail account.

So I'm feeding google all this juicy (IMO) confidential information. What happens when I get locked out by google's automatic systems? I already lost my first gmail account from like 2003, when you had to get an invite to sign up. I'm stuck in a verification loop that emails a yahoo email that no longer exists. Impossible to get a real person to look at it.

If I can just verify that I am who I say I am without an email account... That'd be worth it. Of course that just shifts the burden to the identity verification company rather than an email company.

But verifying my age? I see no purpose other than a backdoor for mass identity verification. keeping lists of people and what they're accessing. Buying alcohol online still requires the person accepting the package to be over 21. Buying firearms online still requires being shipped to an FFL.

I already despise how much information my ISP has about what I see, what I access, and when.

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skeptic_ai 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You lost your account and you still back to Gmail? Impressive

	▲	crazygringo 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Google didn't do anything wrong, they lost their Yahoo and it was the only way they had of verifying their older Gmail. What do you expect, when you don't have access to your recovery method, and it's a free service so it's not like you can prove ownership of a credit card previously used for billing or something? And especially since that was presumably from before the days when Gmail required a phone number, so your recovery e-mail was the only mechanism, and things like 2FA authentication codes didn't exist.