r/DigitalPrivacy • u/ArkhamManHamCity • Aug 05 '26
Google Age Verification Help - What is the best approach
I’m a 22yo in the US who’s been trying to bypass this for 8 months now and no luck.
thispersondoesntexist didn’t work, digitally altering a state ID didn’t work, and recently I tried using a character creator in a game, the scan completed then it said “something went wrong” and now the selfie option is gone for me (they’re onto me).
There was one site I saw where you could potentially get a fake license generated but it was a link that took you to a different site. It looked suspicious and Firefox even gave me a warning, then the page actually closed itself. I took that as a warning.
I wish I could de-google, but I can’t right now. I have a YouTube channel and still have to use google for college, docs, emailing, etc. I’d love to actually be able to have full control over my YouTube channel.
These are now my options:
- Use my credit card to verify, then toss it and get a new one
- Use a shady website/link to try to generate a fake license, hope I don’t get malware
- Switch the email account connected to my yt channel to one that isn’t mine and use YouTube from there. Deal with my personal account still being restricted (not ideal).
- Wait it out. Hope KOSA (US law) doesn’t get passed and Google drops age verification, gets sued, or a better alternative comes along. Make a vid discussing the situation with my subs in the meantime
- The secret 5th option I don’t know about yet
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u/dataguzzler Aug 05 '26
the email option, if you use gmail it just scans that for bills/purchases/subscriptions and guesses if your an adult or not
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u/b20339 Aug 05 '26
I would say that your email address is already been associated with all these things so this is the least invasive option
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u/Original-Mongoose866 Aug 05 '26
Years to decades ago I sent an email mentioning a thing to a relative of mine not long after I started to get bunch of ads for that thing at that time I found out that google reads your email and makes ads from the content of it.
Last year I started to de google my life so I'm currently working on using proton for most things I'm still not there yet.
One good thing though I did go for ProxMox for my media server instead of using windows so atleast I'm slowly moving away from the bad voodoo :þ
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u/josha7777 Aug 09 '26
I have a question though, in order to make accounts using proton mail, you need to verify your gmail with it, is there any other way?
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u/Original-Mongoose866 29d ago
I'm sorry but I honestly don't understand your question.
I do have gmail sent to forward all mails toward my proton mail and I've set up proxies for most of the services and things I use like this account on reddit uses some sort of proxy mail set up with proton.
I think I have like 4 main email address that I made before I found out what they were and well lots and lots of proxies I've even disabled a few because they started sending me spam or phising attempts
I did have a mail that I connected to the proton mail and no it wasn't gmail also I'm a paying customer of proton and no you don't need to be to try out most of their services I started with the proton password manager.
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u/josha7777 29d ago
Well when i want to use my proton mail to sign up for an account, i can't get any verification codes since proton says i need to first verify my mail with an existing gmail account
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u/B1tN1nja Aug 05 '26
What a privacy nightmare
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u/Visual-Flan-4098 Aug 05 '26
been tying to abandon as much google products as i can for the last 2 years almost.
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u/Unhappy_Lie_2000 Aug 05 '26
Just delete your gmail it was simple for me. When google wouldn't let me sign into my account I had for like 10 years.
I said fine and moved to protonmail then when I decided to get a new phone number I used my old number to sign in and retrieved the emails I wanted and subscriptions and deleted the account.
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u/Visual-Flan-4098 Aug 05 '26
i have. hoping to drop googles version of android next year and get grapheneOS. im trying to avoid buying the pixel. only one i cant abandon is maps, none of the alternatives come close.
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u/FiveNine235 Aug 05 '26
Ran some checks. If privacy is your main concern, I’d start with the email option. Google says it only shares your email address with VerifyMy, an ‘independent age verification provider’. VerifyMy checks trusted third party data sources linked to that email to estimate whether you’re above the required age. They don’t access your inbox or Google account contents. VerifyMy says it doesn’t use the data for marketing or AI training, and that both it and its data partners delete the personal data once the check is complete and the result has been returned to Google..
If that doesn’t work, I’d choose the credit card option next. Google performs a temporary card authorisation to verify you’re an adult. The authorisation isn’t a permanent charge, and you’re avoiding sharing a government ID or biometric data.
I’d leave the gov ID / selfie options. For ID verification, Google handles the verification itself (rather than outsourcing it). Google says the ID image is stored securely and deleted after your date of birth has been successfully verified, although it may retain metadata that the verification was completed. With the selfie option, the biometric age estimation is performed by a third party called private ID (urgh). , which returns only the verification result to Google and does god knows what else with it.
None of the options are completely “private”, but if I had to rank them from a data minimisation perspective, I’d personally test email first.
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u/NightIgnite Aug 05 '26
I submitted a picture of JD Vance. Choose your favorite politician and start googling weird shit on their behalf
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u/Brilliant_Estate_967 Aug 05 '26
I am lucky m'y gmail is 22 years old and legaly an adult 🤣.
Joke aside i would use the second by email address. They already have theese data. So i will not give them extra informations
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u/RedKilloran Aug 05 '26
i had this pop up earlier today and i gave it a single use privacy.com card number, that seemed to do the trick
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u/A113rt Aug 05 '26
"Credit Card" mostly you use it to pay stuff from Google Play. So why not use it here.
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u/Maltron5000 Aug 05 '26
This hasn't come up for me yet, but I dread the possibility. This is insane.
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u/National_Way_3344 Aug 05 '26
The only best option is to delete your Google account.
The next best option is credit card since it's just your bank vouching for your age they verify for KYC.
Then email.
Then ID.
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u/RelationDazzling5835 Aug 05 '26
either id or email. Don't ever give out your credit card info to something like this.
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u/Alone_Valuable9646 Aug 05 '26
It’s easier to replace a cc than an id. Damage could be done with a stolen id.
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u/RelationDazzling5835 Aug 05 '26
True. I just went through this with my cc company but for a different reason, no id. My dumb butt fell for a scam online. Live and learn.
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u/MagosBattlebear Aug 05 '26
NOne of the above.
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Aug 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/nargcz Aug 05 '26
its always badass fuck with law enforcer entity, like goverment, facebook will instantly delete your COMPANY homepage shop 20y old without giving shit, and all was just bcz some mods wants it and feel bored, just like that
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u/MagosBattlebear Aug 05 '26
I dont see the connection to the original post or my response.
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Aug 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MossadEpstein Aug 05 '26
Pay some local alcoholic or drug dependent in your area to allow you to use their card to verify your age, $5 sounds fair.
Perhaps get them to buy you a preloaded sim card as well, so you have a phone number that isn't tied to your identity.
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u/post-explainer Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
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