Age Verification Options

[jim101]

There seem to be many options for age verification services. Not sure how up to date or authoritative the FSC is but perhaps a resonable starting point.

https://action.freespeechcoalition.c...tion-policies/
https://action.freespeechcoalition.c...ication-bills/

Issues for services could include:

• Effectiveness - do they accurately stop minors and comply with legal requirements for different jurisdictions
• Ease of integration to website
• Is easy and safe for website visitors
• Cost - to website operator and/or user

Some examples, in no particular order:

https://go.cam/
https://www.ageverif.com/
https://www.agewallet.com/
https://verifymy.io/
https://www.jumio.com/
https://sumsub.com/
https://www.yoti.com/
https://ondato.com/
https://getid.com/
https://www.trulioo.com/
https://www.credas.co.uk/
https://www.veriff.com/

Some of these examples are perhaps more tailored to verify ID for KYC rather than simple filtering of minors. For either use it would be interesting to know which adult sites use which service and experiences good or bad as developer/integrator or user.

After a quick look at the main dozen or so camsites it seems a couple use 3rd party - Cam4(ageverif), Chaturbate(yoti), half seem to rely on "blurring>create account/purchase credit" and the remainder don't seem to censor at all (using a France location VPN at least).

[cerulean]

I've learned the APIs for VerifyMy and Yoti, and I'm looking at learning Agemin next. Possibly Ondato. I've also learned iDenfy, but that's KYC.

VerifyMy has been pretty easy to work with. iDenfy was stellar to work with. These two are the only ones I've worked with that have a legitimate sandbox.

Effectiveness is complicated. Yoti released a whitepaper about their effectiveness which is promising.

Ease of integration depends. Are you doing a SFW tour + NSFW members area? Are you verifying before even seeing the tour?

If you are very risk averse, then no, it's not that easy. You need to protect the ENTIRE directory or domain until age verification is performed successfully. The only software that I know of that is that comprehensive and allows for a SFW tour is the one that I built, LoginBlue. The other implementations I've seen only protect pages, not directories.

Ease of use for users depends on which verification system you use. Some are more lax than others, and that means you take on additional risk the easier it is for users. I am not convinced by OCRing IDs and using AI to guess ages. Some of these providers have put a lot of effort into that though, and they seem to work.

As for whether it's safe for visitors, that also depends. I don't know how safe these 3rd party software platforms are. Everything is vulnerable. Nothing is 100% secure. We really don't know the practices of any provider. That means they had better be doing their due diligence whatever that looks like.

Cost is interesting. If you are only verifying after joining, then there really is no cost, because you can just roll the verification into the member price. If you're verifying everyone before loading the tour, then yeah, that's gonna be expensive.

[jim101]

I've learned the APIs for VerifyMy and Yoti, and I'm looking at learning Agemin next. Possibly Ondato. I've also learned iDenfy, but that's KYC.

VerifyMy has been pretty easy to work with. iDenfy was stellar to work with. These two are the only ones I've worked with that have a legitimate sandbox.

Effectiveness is complicated. Yoti released a whitepaper about their effectiveness which is promising.

Ease of integration depends. Are you doing a SFW tour + NSFW members area? Are you verifying before even seeing the tour?

If you are very risk averse, then no, it's not that easy. You need to protect the ENTIRE directory or domain until age verification is performed successfully. The only software that I know of that is that comprehensive and allows for a SFW tour is the one that I built, LoginBlue. The other implementations I've seen only protect pages, not directories.

Ease of use for users depends on which verification system you use. Some are more lax than others, and that means you take on additional risk the easier it is for users. I am not convinced by OCRing IDs and using AI to guess ages. Some of these providers have put a lot of effort into that though, and they seem to work.

As for whether it's safe for visitors, that also depends. I don't know how safe these 3rd party software platforms are. Everything is vulnerable. Nothing is 100% secure. We really don't know the practices of any provider. That means they had better be doing their due diligence whatever that looks like.

Cost is interesting. If you are only verifying after joining, then there really is no cost, because you can just roll the verification into the member price. If you're verifying everyone before loading the tour, then yeah, that's gonna be expensive.

Thank you for sharing these insights, looks like a very ad-hoc sector. At first glance Yoti seems to have the highest profile.

[cerulean]

Thank you for sharing these insights, looks like a very ad-hoc sector. At first glance Yoti seems to have the highest profile.

You're welcome. Yoti definitely has a big market share I think.

[jim101]

You're welcome. Yoti definitely has a big market share I think.

Any idea how the Yoti pricing works?

My preference would be for a SFW area with adult content behind a paywall with credit card purchase demonstrating 18+ user. As an extra provision the SFW area could have content blurred for States/Countries. I have been told by one source at least that AV would still be required in this case which seems illogical and dubious but may well be the case if a particular US state requires AV by a method not including credit card purchase.

[cerulean]

Any idea how the Yoti pricing works?

My preference would be for a SFW area with adult content behind a paywall with credit card purchase demonstrating 18+ user. As an extra provision the SFW area could have content blurred for States/Countries. I have been told by one source at least that AV would still be required in this case which seems illogical and dubious but may well be the case if a particular US state requires AV by a method not including credit card purchase.

I'm not entirely sure what Yoti costs, but the UK government has this PDF that appeared in a search. No idea if it's accurate.

As for your suggestion, a lot of my clients, and people on Gfy, are putting up a SFW tour with an AV locked members area. The problem with this, and why I added age verification to LoginBlue, is that to be really risk averse you probably need to completely keep NSFW content blocked until age verification completes. That means not just protecting your website, but your directories. If people can login and crawl for content without age verifying, then I imagine you've got a problem on your hand, no?

[jim101]

I'm not entirely sure what Yoti costs, but the UK government has this PDF that appeared in a search. No idea if it's accurate.

As for your suggestion, a lot of my clients, and people on Gfy, are putting up a SFW tour with an AV locked members area. The problem with this, and why I added age verification to LoginBlue, is that to be really risk averse you probably need to completely keep NSFW content blocked until age verification completes. That means not just protecting your website, but your directories. If people can login and crawl for content without age verifying, then I imagine you've got a problem on your hand, no?

I would be thinking that the members area should be kept blurred/inaccessible until after a user has created an account and made a credit purchase. Of the main camsites it seemed that Camsoda, F4F, MyFreeCams & Streamate do this, although perhaps there is a 3 party AV after the create account stage.