Althouse: "A third of children say they have bypassed online age checks in the past two months - some by drawing fake moustaches on their faces to trick facial recognition software."

May 4, 2026

"A third of children say they have bypassed online age checks in the past two months - some by drawing fake moustaches on their faces to trick facial recognition software."

Euro News reports.

26 comments:

Not an oldster. said...: Even the girls!!!

Lolol; 5/4/26, 10:28 AM
Not an oldster. said...: The theme for today...
What HAS our world become??

Althouse style; 5/4/26, 10:29 AM
n.n said...: A telling tale of virtual democracy. Things that don't work.; 5/4/26, 10:29 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Give em a spankin'; 5/4/26, 10:36 AM
Levi Starks said...: And they say today’s children aren’t as smart as their parents.; 5/4/26, 10:42 AM
Aggie said...: If they insist on passing as adults, then treat them accordingly. Since it's the UK, you could try throwing them in jail.; 5/4/26, 10:57 AM
FullMoon said...: LOL, Euro news tells 'em how to bypass with moustaches. Just like local news warning a dozen years ago about kids inhaling gas from whipped cream cans, all of a sudden, big surge on whipped cream sales and shoplifting.; 5/4/26, 11:04 AM
Leland said...: We should call it “micro scofflaw” against governments that don’t play by the rules.; 5/4/26, 11:22 AM
Christopher B said...: Day ending in Y; 5/4/26, 11:32 AM
Hey Skipper said...: [On] May 6, 2026, Utah will become, to EFF’s knowledge, the first state in the nation to target the use of VPNs to avoid legally mandated age-verification gates.; 5/4/26, 11:33 AM
bagoh20 said...: "A third of children say they have bypassed online age checks"

The other two thirds are sitting right beside them.; 5/4/26, 11:39 AM
Enigma said...: Who's shocked by this? Back in the day, teens made/bought fake IDs to get into bars and nightclubs. The girls who matured early routinely associated with 25-35 year old men and got pregnant too.

Point of awareness: Early researchers of Apple's face unlock technology found that one only needs to simulate the eye-nose-upper-lip triangle to fool the system. It doesn't look at the permiter of the face at all. Make a rubber mold of an adult middle face --> create a mask.; 5/4/26, 12:00 PM
Aught Severn said...: Back in the early 90s, the first age verification scheme I learned to bypass as a young kid was a quiz when you started Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patty in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals. The multiple choice questions were once adults would find easy to answer (what is the domino theory? Form 1040 is a ). But...trial and error taught me the answers even if they had no meaning to me. The higher the score on the quiz, the more...adult oriented... the game's visuals became in certain parts.; 5/4/26, 12:49 PM
boatbuilder said...: The fake moustache makes a comeback! Plus ca change...; 5/4/26, 1:39 PM
tommyesq said...: Now that the fake mustache trick has been reported, it will be two-thirds of children next month.; 5/4/26, 1:40 PM
Aggie said...: Would one of those old wax mustaches do the trick?; 5/4/26, 1:50 PM
n.n said...: A face embalmed on a stretched skin. Is it AI, AI, or a sim?; 5/4/26, 2:00 PM
n.n said...: There's the problem of authentication and establishing a one-to-one relationship.; 5/4/26, 2:02 PM
n.n said...: Call them the weather vain in honor of the weatherman legacy.; 5/4/26, 2:03 PM
john mosby said...: I wish I had a pencil-thin mustache
The "Boston Blackie" kind
A two-toned Ricky Ricardo jacket
And an autographed picture of Andy Devine
I remember bein' buck-toothed and skinny
Writin' fan letters to Sky's niece Penny
Oh, I wish I had a pencil-thin mustache
Then I could solve some mysteries too
Then it's Bandstand, Disneyland, growin' up fast
Drinkin' on a fake I.D.
Yeah, and Rama of the jungle was everyone's Bawana
But only jazz musicians were smokin' marijuana
Yeah, I wish I had a pencil-thin mustache
Then I could solve some mysteries too
CC, JSM; 5/4/26, 2:05 PM
narciso said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/4/26, 3:04 PM
Clyde said...: But what about the girls who aren't Italian?; 5/4/26, 4:15 PM
chuck said...: A friend got mad at her kids for getting fake IDs. She wasn't mad because the IDs were fake, she was mad because they were low quality. When she was a kid they got quality fake IDs.; 5/4/26, 4:53 PM
chuck said...: Leisure Suit Larry

I played the original, Softporn Adventure, on a MS-DOS system. It used ascii art and was passed around on a pirated floppy. The original was better.; 5/4/26, 5:18 PM
Lazarus said...: I think of Snoopy with the fake moustache that looked like it was stuck on. That was supposed to be his brother Spike. I guess everybody stopped paying attention to Peanuts in the 70s, but Charles Schulz carried on with the strip until 2000, introducing other characters, like Snoopy's other brother, Olaf.; 5/4/26, 7:30 PM
William50 said...: John Mosby @ 2:05 PM...

That was great!; 5/4/26, 8:05 PM