To be clear, I’m not advocating for online age verification. I’m very much against it in any form. I’m just curious from a technical standpoint if it’s possible somehow to construct an accurate age verification system that doesn’t compromise a user’s privacy? i.e., it doesn’t expose the person’s identity to anyone nor leaves behind a paper trail that can be traced to that person?
Read back what you wrote. Your first line was about a trusted credential provider. Thats a middle man. Then you talk about creating a proof. Guess what, that phone and browser are known to spy on you excessively. That’s another middle man. And odds are that same phone or browser it what you will use to access something that needs the verification. So the same phone or browser has all parts of the information.
And of course it’s pointless because anyone could steal an ID and get themselves a key. Or steal your phone… so it wouldn’t even prove anything.