What's The Issue With Age (Adult) Verification Service   Age or Adult Verification is primarily an issue in the United States and has been the cause of much heated debate. According to US law, as I understand it, a credit card transaction is only legal for persons over the age of 18. This being the case, anyone who processes a transaction using a credit card is assumed to be over 18.   Law makers have tried several times to make age verification mandatory posing very stiff penalties for webmasters who didn't comply. Each time a law has been passed though, it's been shortlived due to heavy lobbying by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and found un-constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court based on First Amendment rights.   While such imposed actions on webmasters may in fact be un-constitutional, I believe there is an inherent duty that webmasters (U.S. ones, at least) observe the same community standards as do public television, stores that sell adult material and so on. We do not allow the sale of cigarettes to persons under 18 and in most states a person must be over 21 to purchase alcohol. Positive identification and proof of legal age is mandatory in all these situations and no one is having a fit over it. All adult type bookstores, movies theaters, strip clubs, massage parlors and the like also abide by these rules with no real impact on their business.   Protecting minors from certain materials is not a first amendment issue since their speech is not at issue. Parents can not possibly control their children 24 hours a day. If they could none would use drugs, smoke, drink or do anything else they weren't supposed to do. As responsible adult webmasters, most of whom make a considerable living in the online adult entertainment field, I believe we should do our part to be of service. And, no one should expect an age verification service to spend tens of thousands of dollars a month to verfiry surfers for free.   Since the use of a credit card transaction is considered proof of legal age here in the U.S. this means all membership sites that use a credit card to obtain access are also providing a insurance that minors don't gain access. However, those that use online checks or phone billing do not.   Please do not construe my position as "everyone should use an age verification service", I'm only explaining the issues surrounding them. Every webmaster, ultimately, must do what he feels is right for his situation.

How Adult Verification Actually Works   Age Verification services process transactions for the sole purposes of verifying someone is over 18 and making money by doing so. Once verified, there name is placed in a database and a record of the person's transaction is maintained for the appropriate period. All services I am aware of keep client information confidential, though the service may use the list for it's on mail promotions. These services charge the person requesting verification a fee, usually either annual or bi-annual with lifetime being a common option.   Because age verification services can deal with many sites at once, purchasing their service guarantees you access to lots of sites (most represent many thousands of sites) while purchasing their service only once. Webmasters decide which service to partner with and simply put a bit a htlm code on their pages that offer two options. If a surfer has a valid AV code from that site's designated service they are allowed immediate access for free and the webmaster gets nothing. Surfer's that don't have the right service are offered an opportunity to sign up from that site and the webmaster gets a commission for the signup. This helps offset the cost of running a site or in many cases webmasters make substantial profit.   You can see now why most sites accept only one service. If they accepted all of them, they would get many less new signup commissions each month.   For a handfull of webmasters age verification is their sole intent and they will typically accept many services. But, most webmasters need to make some money for their bandwidth, labor, etc (which is certainly ok) and age verification is more appealing than running a full membership system.

What About The So Called FREE AVS?   Yes, there are actually quite a few FREE AV services these days. They have simply found a new way to make money while giving away their service.   All I've seen use the same method. When you signup you are also signed up for a free trial membership to a large pay site. If you do not cancel your trial membership to the pay site without the amount of time specified you will be billed their normal monthly fee on a recurring basis. The AV service is paid a commission for give you the free trial membership.   The membership site are gambling that you won't cancel and they will have a new customer to bill every month. On the other hand if you do cancel according to their Terms and Conditions you will never be billed and you still get to keep the free AV service account.   It's a great value if you pay attention to what you're doing. If you don't it could get expensive. I personally have and account with 4 free AV services and have never paid a dime.

Age (Adult) Verification Services

Due to the nature of the adult industry I am no longer recommending specific AVS companies. Many no longer handle celebrity content.

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