Are there good solutions for age verification?

Re:Are there good solutions for age verification? by Tichy on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @03:17PM (#18474)

I have googled, but it is difficult to judge the services that come up. (Edit: just found that Idology seems to verify based on street address - good enough for a mail order company, I guess, but probably not for access restrictions to a web page?).

It is of course a legal question, but also a technical one. For example it is a technical question if I can determine the country my user is coming from. I suspect not, though (user could use proxy in other country) - or at most, one could determine a probability and then it would again become a legal question.

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Re:Are there good solutions for age verification? by willarson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @03:52PM (#18482)

I am fairly certain that it is possible to determine country by IP. I have seen this done before in several cases: some products with encryption are illegal to "export", and thus restrict the IPs that can access them. Also, I have seen the same for content providers who only have a license for a certain market (specifically I have seen a Japanese company restrict their content to "Japanese IPs").

You make a good point about proxying through different countries, but I don't think in you would be liable for that. Often these things work on some sort of a "reasonable effort" type clause, because its impossible to verify with complete certainty someones age programmatically.

Perhaps asking them trivia about music that was in style two decades ago...

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