The company should know a customer’s identity to foster confidence and adhere to legal obligations. When the business sells age-restricted goods or services like alcohol or online gaming, confirming a customer’s age may be necessary.

Social media companies are also receiving more attention due to the rise in account creation by minors. Online age verification aids businesses in making sure they adhere to age limitations on the goods and services they provide as well as legal requirements (such as knowing your customers’ requirements).

The authentication systems for age verification can check documents, biometrics, or data records to confirm that a consumer is the age they claim to be.

Industries Where Age Verification Is Necessary

Any company that sells age-restricted goods grants access to activities gated by age, or offers services that demand adult consent is required to verify customers’ ages. There are several industries, such as:

• Alcohol
• Tobacco
• Gaming online site
• Gambling
• Energy Supplements
• Medicine and drugs
• Entertainment for Adults
• Firearms

Age Verification Procedures In Online Industries

The safest and most effective way for age-restricted businesses to deal with the concerns of underage access is through an online identity verification solution. It guarantees that companies are up-to-date in conforming with laws from various nations.

Recently, the method seems to be a reliable way to accurately determine age. Different age verification systems may have additional requirements that depend on the type of organization, the country it operates in, and the industry.

But almost always, the following procedures are required:

Online Identity Verification Through Self-declaration

The user must be honest when providing their age for this verification. Although this approach is the simplest to use, it serves more as a mechanism for businesses to check a box than as a means of genuinely protecting children.

This strategy should only be utilized in low-risk use cases. In regulated businesses, it should never be used, as people can easily lie to obtain the content. It is easy for underage users to elude detection if no system is in place to verify a user’s age.

Online Age Verification Through Checking Credit Card

The method entails requesting a person’s credit card number to verify their age. Using this approach guarantees that no disclosure of personal information, such as ID information, is required, and it is also straightforward to use for customers. For instance, Google can use it to verify the user’s age to grant access to services or content only available to users of a certain age.

The rationale behind the method is that a user must be older than 18 to have a credit card. Although this approach might have proven reliable decades ago, it can only be used as an additional security measure now. Using this technique in conjunction with other ones is preferable because youngsters in many nations can have bank cards that are frequently linked to their parents’ accounts.

Image Verification

Businesses can use algorithms for machine learning powered by neural networks that have been programmed to identify an individual’s age based on their picture to validate the age of their customers. If the business possesses client databases, they can also compare the applicant’s photograph with the list of already registered customers.

A base of confirmed clients to compare against is essential in this situation. Currently, age estimation from a snapshot still consists mainly of an estimation exercise with a roughly ten-year margin of error.

This approach can discern between a child and an adult relatively reliably, but it cannot confirm whether the young man in the picture is 23 or 20.

It is difficult to employ this check as the only trustworthy verification technique. For age verification to be successful, photo checks must be paired with additional processes like ID document checks. Furthermore, they are quite expensive because of sophisticated machine learning techniques like computer vision.

Online Age Verification Through Checking ID Documents

A reliable way to verify age online is through identity document checks. Modern, specifically designed OCR (optical character recognition) engines can remotely analyze a scanned copy of an ID holder’s identification and, if necessary, confirm the holder’s age.

Using the date of birth listed in the document, these tools analyze the retrieved data using lexical analysis to calculate a person’s age. Most of the time, businesses in regulated industries employ automated document check technologies.

Age verification is simply one of many possible scenarios in their case, which also frequently involves automated onboarding, automated data entry, different compliance tasks (KYC meaning Know Your Customer, AML meaning Anti-Money Laundering), and more.

The advantage of this age verification system is that it can read and authenticate multiple security (machine-readable zone and barcodes) aspects of the document. It can also retrieve information from visual verification, including the date of birth, name, passport number, etc.

Biometric Verification Combined with ID Document Verification

Biometric verification is the next step up from checking ID documents. The biometric authentication confirms that the document belongs to the name holder. This prompts the user to pose for a selfie while gazing into the camera. The final pictures are compared to the images in the documentation.

A liveness check should also be performed as a general rule. These checks are essential to confirm that the subject of the camera is a real person and not a recording. It has been achieved, given the advancement of visual technologies that make it possible to build convincing masks and deep fakes.

Identity verification companies use these sophisticated systems, as the system estimates a person’s age during the procedures and raises the alarm if the user is detected as a minor.

Bottom Line

Combining identity documents and biometric checks is the most reliable and thorough method for identifying a person. Also, verifying their ID and ensuring that they are a genuine person and are of legal age can help protect businesses from legal liabilities.

Online age verification is crucial for internet businesses and retailers. However, simplifying might result in security risks, while complexity can irritate customers.

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