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     age verification industry

This note considers the age verification industry, which encompasses specialist businesses catering to the needs of the adult content sector through to giant enterprises concerned with purchasing of guns, tobacco, alcohol and other products.

Age Verification Services (AVS), also known as Adult Verification Services, are located at the intersection of the adult content business and regulation.

Several regulatory regimes require site operators to implement regimes that restrict access by minors. Those schemes typically involve verification of a visitor's age, determined through use of a password or other identifier assigned after the the AVS operator has received a credit card payment from that visitor. As discussed in the Censorship & Free Speech guide elsewhere on this site, AVS schemes are open to abuse: the visitor using the AVS identity might for example be a child using a parent's AVS identifier.

AVS are operated as businesses, not charities. Fees to consumers vary - from US$25 per month to US$20 per quarter. Typically those fees are shared between the AVS operator, the operators of sites using the AVS (with payment on a flat or per visit basis) and third parties such as payment processors. Many AVS operators offer differential access: a standard access and premium access - whether to 'better' sites or to quarantined 'superior' content within sites.

The structure of the AVS sector reflects that of the industry as a whole, with around ten major AVS operators such as AdultCheck claiming to cover between 60% to 80% of AVS-protected sites and a large number of smaller operators covering a smaller proportion of sites. Some adult sites have an exclusive relationship with a particular AVS operator; others allow access through several AVS schemes.

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