The government is spying on you to help the kids.

And the videogame industry seems pleased with the results.

The Federal Trade Commission sends out “mystery shoppers” to try and trick stores into doing the wrong thing and then reports the results. Think about it as a sort of civic minded "Candid Camera".

In the last round of mystery shopping, 80% of kids under 17 were turned away when they tried to buy or rent an M rated game.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board seems pretty happy with this, considering that’s a higher number of turn-a-ways compared to last year’s 76% and the 65% rate the year before.

The game people love these numbers because they can point with some confidence to the fact that most of the time kids can’t just walk into a store and buy mature videogames. What the study has not disclosed, however, is just what clever techniques youngsters use to score that copy of Grand Theft Auto IV the other 20% of the time.

My guess—fake mustaches.