There's no reason Aristotle or Veratad should see who the underlying requestor is. Yoti should receive the verification request, strip the context, make the request - that's it. The fact that it isn't structured that way and they are tagging on additional metadata suggests per-query economics, which creates a direct incentive to route more verifications through more parties, exactly backwards from data minimization. I'm not going to call it a rev share, but the architecture is consistent with one.
While ZKP is more useful in limiting how much info is provided and, depending on implementation letting you make sure of the full scope of information acquired....if it literally only validates age then there's nothing other than logistics preventing a single adult from authenticating the entire world.
If a government mandates age verification and tolerates companies like Yoti as enforcers of their law, it's exactly the same thing. If politicians aren't willing to see that new laws are enforced with integrity, then these corrupt politicians are the problem and need to face the consequences.
Many of these systems are added to digital wallets due to legal requirements or fraudulent cases. For example, one case of fraud that I’m aware of happened in Chile, where citizens were able to open bank accounts digitally with just their ID. But since there is no good biometric information, many criminals took the IDs of homeless people to open accounts and move money around.
Sadly, these shitting things happen, then companies use these services to avoid the liability, and then these services abuse the information they have.
People don’t have much choice unless their representatives in government do something; it’s not about apathy: you can stop using one bank app, but not all of them otherwise you’ll be out of the financial system.
Silly as they were trying to be, the concept still holds -
Facial biometrics can and do get compromised too. Your example of IDs taken from the homeless - what the heck prevents organized criminals from taking pictures or recordings of their faces too?
Already there's malware out there stealing facial recognition data from infected devices (ESET reported on this nearly two years ago). Unlike changeable passwords, once your facial recognition data is compromised then that's it. Scammers can now impersonate you on top of having defeated this additional layer of fraud prevention.
Yoti is used by governments. Principled stances are all good and well for hn comments but eventually collide with reality
But what are the dangers? I mean concretely, in a way that can affect their day to day life, with significant probabilities.
HN is a tech forum, people here are very aware the tech risks. But talk to anyone in a given field and they will find a way to scare you. Don't go out in the sun without SPF50 gear or you will get cancer, your house electrical system is a fire hazard because you don't have the latest breakers, buy a gun, don't buy a gun, have this and that survival equipment, learn self defense, never talk to the cops, don't leave your drink unattended,...
At some point, people just want to stop worrying and do their things. And guess what, most people are fine! In fact considering how many things can turn bad, normal people are rather good at avoiding the worst despite an apparently carefree attitude. Meaning they are not so bad at evaluating risks, and that society has pretty good guardrails.
So cut normal people some slack unless they are in immediate danger (for example if they are in the process of responding to fishing), uploading their picture to Yoti is not that. They have other worries in their own field.
Inform them, but don't press it, and if you are in the field, your job is to help normal people be carefree, not cause more anxiety, they have more than enough already.
The thing is, this kind of stuff already happens all the time. The number of spam calls people suffer through are a direct result of companies digging through the contacts list after being granted that permission (though often without being granted that permission), then selling that data to brokers. Data breaches that wipe people's credit or force a credit freeze because they bought something ten years ago are another common one. Or think about package stalking, where people get access to someone's purchase history and the tracking number to a purchase so that they can steal it in transit or once it arrives. There's a number of beatings and murders that have happened because of police officers being able to access surveillance tools to track former romantic partners or spouses. All of these are different parts of the lack of privacy, and they're all getting worse because the tools that are used to surveil are becoming more widespread and more accessible.
Privacy is a protection against the intelligent attacks of other humans. It is not a frill that can be taken away without ridiculous and trailing harm.
People need to learn to distrust such systems and exposing failings such as this one is a good way to do it.
We aren't going to be free of this stuff until the average Joe's mom hear of "forced age verification" and associate it to "unsafe".
As far as device fingerprinting goes, this is pretty tame, compared to what something like chatgpt does: https://www.buchodi.com/chatgpt-wont-let-you-type-until-clou...
The far more concerning part are your pictures/document scans getting sent to them.
The rest of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy papers are listed at https://sp2026.ieee-security.org/accepted-papers.html