From digitally simulated video games to online gambling games, all have seen an upsurge in recent times. The e-commerce industry has generated profitable revenues during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. It changed the preference of people from visiting a shop physically to providing them remote-based e-shopping facilities. Making sure that the person reaching a site is of appropriate age is essential for businesses to ensure a secure customer onboarding process, especially for businesses that deal in age-restricted products and services. Determining whether a user requesting an age-restricted product is of legal age or not can be challenging on online platforms which can create difficulties for both the company as well as the customers. Implementation of an online age verification solution can help limit minors from accessing content that can be dangerous for them.
No Need For Ineffective Age Checkboxes
Analyzing the age of a person upon seeing them shop in a physical store or branch was much easier as compared to identifying their age based on the ineffective age checkboxes. Minors were required to tick the box if they were above the legal age. But this was a technique that can be easily dodged by children to gain access to sites featuring inappropriate content or gamble on online casino sites. As per Shufti Pro News, one of the most significant laws used for online child safety in the US is the children’s online privacy protection act. It determines how the companies process the information of underage people. Therefore, using the old ways of age verification in which the users were asked to fill in their date of birth information has been proven to be fatal as resourceful teenagers have found deceitful ways to fool such methods.
Protecting Minors Through Digital Age Verification Process
To verify age, the user enters their personal details such as name, and date of birth and is required to upload a photo of an official document. Upon cross-matching the age details by extracting the details from the photo document, the users are notified about their status of verification that they are either declined or are verified to access the particular site. To take this step ahead, the process of KYCC (Know Your Customer’s Customer) is used for keeping track of the customers with whom the client is already working to ensure no illegal access is being made to the site.
Multiple Industries Who Need To Imply Age Checks
Different Industries producing age-restricted products can get affected if proper age checks are not implemented. Some of these sectors are listed below:
Selling of Alcohol and Tobacco Products
Specific age limitations are being deployed in various states according to their own jurisdictions. Online retailers are required to follow and check any violation of these laws before making a purchase of any alcohol-related products to prevent minors from underage drinking. These laws are as much applicable as they are to physical vendors. Selling e-cigarettes and prompting them online on various social media platforms can catch the attention of teenagers easily which can lure them to buy these products.
Promoting Weapons
Websites offering to sell items that can be used as a weapon need to overlook their process of customer onboarding. To protect minors from the reach of armed products, parental assistance is also needed equally with businesses implementing identity verification services on their sites so that children can be stopped at the initial process before the product gets delivered to them.
This is evident with shufti pro funding, as companies reflect these identity age checks as their ultimate source of guarding children against reaching such products.
Registering On Online Dating Sites
Many dating services are getting exploited in the light of underage assault cases which have emerged in recent times. Dating sites are required to perform digital age verification online for establishing a smooth customer experience. Governments worldwide are pushing the owner of these services to put adequate age checks in place.
Websites Featuring Adult Content
Violence-based ads popping up in online gaming can affect the minds of minors negatively. This can generate a sense of aggression in them or can cause them to engage in sophisticated crimes. Websites featuring explicit content need to reconsider their policies to restrict the access for underage users.
Wrapping it Up
Manual age checks are ineffective in protecting minors from accessing sites selling age-restricted products. This can lead to exploiting them to carry out criminal activities at a young age. Various industries such as online gaming, dating sites, alcohol, and tobacco companies that sell age-restricted needs to re-evaluate their policies by implementing adequate age checks. For preventing children from becoming a victim of identity theft, digital age verification solutions are devised through which businesses can onboard legitimate customers for login and transactional activities.