How to Properly Implement Age Verification Protocols for your Business

It is mandatory for age-restricted digital businesses to verify the age of their users before granting access to content or services. Age verification solutions empower businesses to accurately identify minors and protect them from potential harm in the online realm

The digital world is rife with content, products, and services that may not be appropriate for minors. And with curious youngsters trying to explore, often using false or fabricated identity documents, a simple pop-up screen asking them to confirm their age is certainly not an adequate deterrent.

Regulatory statutes mandate that digital businesses offering age-restricted content and services, such as online gaming, video games, dating, and more, verify the age of users before allowing them to sign up.

Having the proper age verification tools and protocols is, therefore, crucial for regulated digital platforms to allow only age-appropriate users to access services or products, and protect minors from potentially offensive or harmful content. With age verification, businesses can create age gates around restricted content or services that help prevent under-age users from engaging in restricted activities such as accessing adult content websites, purchasing potentially harmful products, online gaming, social media, and so forth. These restrictions help ensure user safety, compliance with legal obligations, and maintaining brand equity.

Age Verification is Key to Business Success

Age verification is an important tool for digital businesses to create a safer and more responsible digital ecosystem for consumers and manage identity securely. There are several ways age verification is useful for businesses, including:

• Compliance with the prevailing age-restricted content laws
• Protecting minors from exposure to inappropriate content.
• Preventing self-excluded and restricted users from accessing the platforms using illegitimate means.
• Allowing eligible users to quickly access the products or services, thereby optimizing user experience.
• Identifying and reviewing risky users.
• Protecting users from fraud attempts such as account takeover or social engineering
• Meeting data protection requirements by obtaining informed consent from users before conducting age verification.
• Mitigating the risk of losing business license or attracting fines.
• Building brand reputation.

Common Methods of Age Verification

Depending on their unique needs, businesses must choose the most appropriate methods of age verification. Some of the commonly used age verification methods are:

• Date of Birth Confirmation: Users provide their date of birth during the registration process or before accessing age-restricted content.
• Credit Card Verification: As users need to be a certain age to own a credit card, some platforms request users to provide credit card information for age verification.
• ID Verification: Users upload a digital copy of an official identification document (driver's license or passport, for example) to confirm their age.
• Biometric Verification: Using advanced solutions that leverage biometric data, such as facial recognition, to verify a user's age. This is a reliable age verification method and is fast becoming popular.
• Social Media Verification: Platforms that allow users to sign up or log in using their social media accounts, verify age information of the users from their social media profiles. Although convenient for users, this age verification method relies on authenticity of age information on the social media platform.
• Parental Consent: Parents must provide consent before minors are allowed access to certain content or services. This is with a view to ensure parents are aware of and approve of their child's online activities.

The Age Verification Process

The age verification process leverages several technologies. It may include several steps depending on the age verification requirements of an organization. The most common steps include ID check where personal information, such as date of birth, is automatically extracted from user-submitted documents. This information is then matched with reliable public and private databases to ascertain the current age of the user trying to sign-in or log-in. If the age does not match the specified age limit, the user is denied further access.

Businesses use liveness and face match to compare the photo ID or video that the user submits with the facial biometrics of the physically present user to ensure only legitimate consumers are granted access. Further, by integrating KYC, AML, and proof of address checks with the age verification process, businesses build a thorough verification flow.

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Choose a Reliable Age Verification Service Provider

Age verification is a sophisticated process that leverages some of the most advanced digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, optical character recognition, biometrics, facial recognition, liveness detection and so on. It requires precision in extracting information from user-submitted documents, ensuring documents are not forged or fraudulent, and comparing the information with several relevant databases.

Businesses must, therefore, consider several aspects while choosing a vendor for age verification services. Some of the key considerations include:

• Ability to customize the services needed.
• Easy integration via Web SDK, Mobile SDK, or APIs for uninterrupted uptime.
• Access to local and global databases for user information verification.
• 24/7 support, including technical, maintenance, and legal support.
• Dedicated relationship manager for customer success.

Creating a Secure and User-centric Age Verification Process

Ensuring the safety of minors in an increasingly digital world, marred by the ubiquitous presence of bad actors, is critically important. Digital platforms, offering age-restricted content, services, and products, need a secure and user-friendly age verification process that quickly ascertains the correct age of the user to restrict minors from proceeding any further.

With advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, document identification, face detection, liveness, and many others, CAF empowers age-restricted digital businesses to verify a user's age and true identity in a secure and user-friendly manner. CAF can search several reliable public, private, and government databases to verify a wide variety of documents from several countries and geographical locations, enabling businesses to comply with age-related regulations and build user trust.

To learn more about age verification capabilities of CAF, book a demo now.

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