abeseo

About abeseo

Posts by SEO Expert:

Addressing Inconsistencies in Online Age-Verification

Online Age Verification Inconsisitencies

Internet shopping is booming! US American ecommerce grew 50.5% from 2019 to 2020, and 14.2% in 2021 according to DigitalCommerce360. Ecommerce isn’t just for giants like Amazon and Walmart. Smaller online retailers have taken notice of the rising tide, especially in attempt to keep their businesses afloat during pandemic lockdowns.

These smaller enterprises are making use of advancing logistic technologies making selling and shipping much more efficient.

FREE TRIAL

Learn More

With most US Americans carrying internet-accessible smartphones nearly 24/7, the prospects of consumers being able to buy whatever they want at the push of a button is clearly an extremely lucrative one for ecommerce sites. The speed at which all of this has happened has led to frightening gaps in the effectiveness of age and customer verification scattered about the vastness of ecommerce.

The need for accurate and easy to use customer verification is reaching a fevered pitch, and it’s applications like Konfirmi that are leading the way in answering that call.

Mini Case Study – Vaping

The vaping craze has hit the country like a ton of bricks. Unfortunately, it has been minors who seem to be the most affected by this surge. There are various reasons for this. Firstly, vapes are exponentially easier to conceal than cigarettes. Secondly, there has been a lot of misinformation about what tobacco and nicotine vapes are actually made of. Thirdly, until relatively recently, despite still being illegal to sell to minors, e-cigarettes or more specifically, the “vape juice” that is inhaled, has been much easier for children to get their hands on than repeatedly trying to buy cigarettes.

Facial Recognition Failures: Ethical Issues & Racial Profiling

It doesn’t help that the vape marketing is everywhere. Nearly seven out of ten teenagers naturally come across vaping advertisements, which only serve to exacerbate the issue. One out of five 12th graders is vaping. Until recently the minimum age requirement for purchasing tobacco was 18 (which many 12th graders are). This has allowed vaping to spread through high schools at near epidemic rates. The US government raising the legal age to 21 was designed to curtail this influx, however, it is too early into its implementation to notice any effects one way or the other.

As for the actual purchase, it’s one thing to turn away a minor looking to buy vaping products at a convenience store where they can be seen and their identification can be verified. It is a very different thing to achieve the same discernibility on the internet. Some websites will provide cursory age verification methods like “age gates” while others simply flout the law entirely. Because of the nebulousness of the digital space, these vendors can often get away with it. Moreover, many of these sellers are not offering a product that is on the up and up, to begin with. Still, they are more than happy to take a customer’s money and ship them their product, seemingly unconcerned with the particulars of the situation beyond that point.

The problem with underage access to vaping products isn’t a lack of legislation. The problem is a lack of effectively enforcing that legislation. In 2019 several vape related deaths brought vaping into the forefront of US American consciousness. It was those deaths that have spurred on the recent spike in legislative action. It would follow that enforcement measures are due to ramp up soon as well.

As a result, many vape retailers and other purveyors of age-restricted products are getting more serious about their age verification processes and software. While still in use, age gates are really the most useless thing on the internet, offering little protection against minors accessing and purchasing age-restricted products. Now applications like alcohol delivery service Drizly, food delivery service DoorDash, and those that use UPS for alcohol shipping require their delivery drivers to check IDs. This approach has varying levels of effectiveness.

But are these measures strong enough? The unverified sale of alcohol and vape products is one thing, but deadly firearms are also sold online. The internet is in desperate need for accurate and reliable customer verification.

FREE TRIAL

Standardizing the customer verification process would benefit the ecommerce space considerably. Ecommerce needs to find the most viable solution and make it the general best practice within the industry. Applications like Konfirmi are primed to offer that service.

The Importance of an Elevated Standard

The importance of age and customer verification is only going to increase going forward. Strong enforcement of legislation along with new age restricted products makes for increased importance. For instance, ss more and more states legalize cannabis, an entirely new age-restricted market is making its way onto the stage.

At brick-and-mortar establishments, age verification can be done in real life, face-to-face. If someone wants to buy an age-restricted product, they simply show their ID and if it appears valid, they receive their product.

Undeniably, fake IDs have been around for decades. But it’s much more difficult to get a fake ID passed a seasoned convenience store clerk than it is to get passed a shady website that doesn’t particularly care how old you are so long as you have money.

To combat underage consumers from accessing illegal content or products, the ecommerce arena needs to improve its efforts from “age gates” to processes and procedures that actually work. One such solution is Konfirmi which offers state of the art customer verification software. Moreover, it is low cost and easy to implement. Additionally, it provides customers with an easy-to-use system, thus not adversely affecting the customer experience.

Because Konfirmi cross-references information with billions of online records maintained by reputable third-party data providers it is nearly impossible to fool with something as ubiquitous as a fake ID. This means that any online retailer that aims to comply with the law will have a fortified verification apparatus that can seamlessly integrate into their existing platforms.

Conclusion

Age-verification wasn’t a major concern years ago when Amazon was a simple online retailer only selling books. Yet, because just about everyone uses the internet these days, gaps in its effectiveness often present themselves relatively naturally. Such is the case with age verification. The old way is no longer working with regard to age-restricted products. Applications like Konfirmi offer a new and better way.

Teen vaping is a problem that was caught late. It will likely take years to undo the damage of unchecked marketing and unregulated ecommerce. Implementing stronger and standardized age verification is a step in the right direction. Konfirmi offers a cost-effective and easy to use tool to make that step a lot easier for ecommerce to take.

Online Age Verification in Europe

Know Your Customer (KYC) has become increasingly important in Europe over the past few years. European governments have proposed and are enforcing previously passed legislation requiring online enterprises to more assuredly verify customers’ identity.

One key area of customer verification is age. For example, online gambling has age restrictions in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany.

FREE TRIAL

Learn More

However, commonly used age gates typically do not meet the requirements for confirming a user’s age. Another example is that of pornography. Age verification is essential for internet viewing in European nations where pornography is permitted; however, ineffective age gates often do not suffice as appropriate verification.

Additionally, new stringent European regulations and public concern call for strengthening identity verification processes in order to avoid severe penalties or public backlash. Recent actions include:

European Union

The Digital Services Act, (DSA), has been introduced which includes rules for online enterprises to protect EU citizens with higher standards of safeguards. The DSA aims to block illegal online content, goods, and services. As it stands, online entities subject to this act would need to comply with strict “Know Your Business Customer” requirements. Those who do not comply risk hefty fines. The European Council and European Parliament look to decide on this act mid-2022.

Germany

In Germany, internet gaming is facing increased limitations as a result of new legislation that took effect in 2021. Failure to provide robust age and identity verification will result in the rejection of new online gaming licenses or the imposition of fines of up to 500,000 euros and license revocation for existing operators.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the Online Harms Bill calls for a “new era of accountability” for social media companies in order to protect children, among other things. Companies that fail to provide a safe environment would face fines of up to $24 million or 10% of global revenue, whichever is greater, as well as criminal sanctions against senior management.

France

In mid-2020, the French Parliament passed legislation requiring age verification for watching online pornographic. To protect those underaged from viewing this mature material, this legislation will penalize corporations who fail to comply with the law by applying fines and restrictions that may include their websites being blocked in France. Just recently, the French government threatened to block porn websites such as Pornhub and xHamster for failing to enforce more strict age verification measures.

Spain

While age verification is not a national legislative issue, other watchdog agencies have expressed concern about how easy it is for those underaged to access mature online content. While the Data Protection Law of 2018 states that content providers are responsible for ensuring proper age verification, this is not widely enforced. The National Agency for Data Protection issued a report in February 2020 expressing concern over the lack of “effective methods to verify the users are at least 18 years old.” While not recent legislation, awareness of the ease to access age-sensitive content is on the rise.

FREE TRIAL

Italy

In mid-2021, Italy’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) required TikTok to confirm the age of its users. As a result, TikTok removed over 500,000 users either suspected of or actually being under the required age of 13. This investigation and subsequent removals were prompted by a ten-year-old girl dying after participating in a deadly challenge she saw on TikTok. The DPA continues its investigation and work with TikTok to ensure age restrictions are upheld.

Out of Date

In Europe and beyond, “age gates” have been used as a method of online age verification. Age gates often employ a text field that requires the prospective consumer to input their birth date or a simple checkbox that by simply ticking, affirms the customer is of legal age. Using an age gate is one way for websites to demonstrate that they are taking steps to keep their products and services out of the hands of those deemed too young. Additionally, as a benefit to the online enterprise, age gates are frequently regarded as a “low-cost, low-effort method of…protecting one’s assets.”

However, age gates are not the solid and indestructible barriers that their name implies. In fact, many find age gates pointless. Age gates function on the honor system. Due to the lack of penalty for lying or reward for honesty, the majority of people lie on age gates whether they need to or not.

While age gates are intended to act as a digital barrier to dissuade and keep underage individuals from accessing age-restricted goods and services, their efficacy has always been hazy at best.

The Solution

Without a doubt, having an effective and solid age verification system has grown even more important for online businesses in Europe. Additionally, due to the complexity of global identification, which includes an array of personal naming practices, different types of government-issued identification, and access to third-party data, European online businesses require robust methods for verifying age and identification in general.

This begs the question: what can online companies in Europe do to better know their business customers? The answer lies in employing tech solutions to ensure compliance with legislation while also providing a secure and pleasant online experience for customers.

While businesses who are legally compelled to verify their customers’ identity and ages may not have an option about whether or not to comply, they most likely have a choice about the type of software they use. Companies such as Konfirmi provide simple-to-use and cost-effective methods for verifying a customer’s age and identity.

Businesses typically choose their products based on their cost, ease of installation, and consumer user experience. Applications such as Konfirmi take all of these aspects into account. Konfirmi can be quickly added to any website or app. Furthermore, Konfirmi complies with GDPR.

Final Thoughts

While age verification has been a concern in the European online space for many years, it is garnering increased attention in the wake of the explosion of online shops offering products and services that are intended for a more mature audience: e-cigarettes, online betting, mature video games, and pornography. With new European government legislations, online platforms in Europe need to enhance their age verification solutions now.

The Need for Robust Age Verification in Vaping E-Commerce

The United States is currently ablaze with the vaping craze. In the United States, vaping is now a $29 billion industry. Many exalt vaping’s benefits such as a reduced reliance on traditional cigarettes chock-full of chemicals, elimination of deadly second-hand smoke, and assistance in quitting smoking altogether with the tapering of nicotine strengths in vaping liquid.

FREE TRIAL

Learn More

Yet unfortunately, one glaring drawback of vaping is its attraction to those under age. Minors has been drawn to vaping for a variety of reasons. First, vaping is much easier to conceal than smoking traditional cigarettes. Second, many minors are not aware of the dangers of vaping due to the spread of misinformation about the contents of vaping liquid. Third, despite the fact that it is still illegal to sell to minors, e-cigarettes, or more specifically, the “vape juice” that is inhaled, has been much easier for children to obtain than traditional cigarettes.

What makes this situation challenging to control is that purchasing vaping supplies online can be extremely easy with few obstacles to those who are underage. This begs the question: how can minors be kept from purchasing vaping products online?

Teens and Vaping

The 2019 Monitoring the Future report stated that nearly half of all 12^th graders surveyed tried vaping at least once, and 25% had vaped within the previous month. Until recently, the minimum age for purchasing tobacco was 18, which many 12th graders are. This allowed vaping to spread at near epidemic rates through high schools.

The teen vaping issue isn’t helped by pervasive vape marketing. In 2015, over 80% of teens were exposed to e-cigarette advertisements, which has only served to exacerbate the problem. A study in the Journal for American Academy of Pediatrics, reported that youths exposed to e-cigarette marketing were more likely to try vaping within the following year.

Unfortunately, many vaping companies directly target teenagers. “E-cigarettes make frequent appearances on social media newsfeeds and timelines,” according to the Truth Initiative. “E-cigarette companies capitalize on this regulatory gap by offering kid-friendly flavors, such as cotton candy and gummi bear, and packaging e-liquids to look like common food items,” the Truth Initiative continues. Some vaping companies have even offered college scholarships, several even without a minimum age equal to the legal smoking age.

Challenges of Online Vape Sales

It’s one thing to turn away a minor who attempts to purchase vaping products in a brick-and-mortar convenience store where the customer can be seen and their ID can be checked. However, it is much more difficult to achieve that same discernibility on the internet. And while fake IDs have been around for a long time, getting that fake ID past a seasoned convenience store clerk is much more difficult than getting past a questionable website that doesn’t care how old the customer is as long as they can pay.

Many age-restricted websites provide cursory age verification methods such as age gates as an attempt to limit minors. Age gates are fields or questions on an e-commerce website that simply ask if the potential customer is legally of age to purchase products. Age gates can be in the form of a yes/no question or entering in one’s birthdate. As imagined, it is very easy to lie on an age gate without consequence. Due to their being weak hurdles, age gates are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Other less scrupulous online vaping retailers will simply flout the law altogether. These online retailers can often get away without checking age because of the ambiguity of the digital space in and of itself.

FREE TRIAL

Furthermore, many of these sellers are not offering a legitimate product to begin with. Nonetheless, they are more than willing to accept a customer’s money and ship them their product, seemingly unconcerned about the details beyond that point.

More Robust Online Safeguards

In 2019, vaping-related illness and deaths took over news headlines. Of the 2,291 people who became ill, 15% were under the age of 18. These illnesses and their impact on minors sent a shockwave through the United States. In response, many cities and states began debating prohibiting vape products or at the very least, a way to limit its access to minors.

This public pressure has been encouraging vaping retailers to get more serious about their age verification systems and software. As currently used age gates lack reliability and dependability, a more robust safeguard is needed in the online vaping retail space.

For online vaping retailers, Konfirmi is the solution. Konfirmi provides cutting-edge customer verification software at a low-cost with simple implementation. Konfirmi cross-references customer information with billions of online records maintained by reputable third-party data providers, making it nearly impossible to deceive with something as common as a fake ID.

LEARN MORE

This allows any online retailer who is serious about meeting legal requirements and maintaining a good public reputation to be able to do so all while providing customers with a user-friendly entry point.

Conclusion

Under-aged vaping is a problem that has only recently been identified but will continue to snowball if not addressed. It will almost certainly take years to repair the damage caused by unchecked marketing and unregulated e-commerce. Implementing a robust form of age verification is a positive step to resolve this. Providers such as Konfirmi provide low-cost and simple-to-use solutions to make that step much easier to take.

Failures in Facial Recognition

“Yeah, the computer got it wrong,” Robert Williams said to 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper about his arrest. Williams was wrongly arrested in 2020 due to the Detroit Police Department’s facial recognition software inaccurately identifying him as having stolen $3,800 worth of watches. Williams has since sued the City of Detroit.

FREE TRIAL

Learn More

Recently when Facebook users viewed a video featuring Black men, its AI prompted a message to viewers asking if they would like to “keep seeing videos about Primates.”

In 2015, Google Photos AI facial-recognition program mistakenly tagged Black people as “Gorillas.”

Over the last fifteen years, facial recognition technology has exploded in popularity with governments and businesses alike, but with significant failures.

Racial Bias in Facial Recognition

A 2019 US federal study reported widespread racial bias in nearly 200 facial recognition algorithms. The study discovered that minorities were misidentified at a significantly higher rate signifying a lack of impartiality. One of the study’s researchers, Patrick Grother, noted that racial biases were found in “the majority of the face recognition algorithms we studied.” In fact, some of the algorithms tested were up to 100 times more likely to mix up minorities as compared to white Americans.

The research study published by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) discovered that those of Asian, African, and Native American descent were the most prone to misidentification.

The facial recognition technology was tested for practical application. One such test was identification through a large database of mugshots, in this case an FBI-curated database. In this test, Black women were found to be the most likely to be falsely identified.

Furthermore, how the technology is used can be amiss. Dr. Timnit Gebru, prominent computer scientist and former co-leader of Google’s ethical AI team, recognizes that even a perfect AI facial recognition has issues when used inappropriately. She noted that during the 2015 Freddie Grey protests in Baltimore, police were using facial recognition technology to identify protesters by matching images to social media profiles. Gebru states “the combination of overreliance, misuse and lack of transparency…is dangerous.”

When it comes to crime and punishment, the use of inaccurate technology has the potential to be devastating on both an individual and civil levels. The fact that many businesses and government institutions continue to advocate for widespread adoption of the demonstrably flawed technology is alarming.

The Legal Quagmire of Facial Recognition

The United States lacks an overarching federal law and consolidated best practices directing the use of facial recognition. As such, state and local governments have been left on their own in determining what to allow and not allow for facial recognition. Some choose to remain uninvolved while others choose to embrace facial recognition wholeheartedly including its use for surveillance and law enforcement purposes.

For instance, the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals ruled in 2019 that Illinois Facebook users have the right to sue the business over its use of face recognition technology. This decision is in accordance with the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). BIPA requires businesses to obtain expressed consent from their customers before collecting biometric data. This includes fingerprints and facial recognition information.

Both Texas and Washington have similar biometric laws. Under Texas Business and Commercial Code, Section 503.001, the state strictly prohibits facial recognition for identification purposes with certain exceptions. Under this rule, Texas allows civil penalties up to $25,000 per violation. In Washington, State Bill 6280 outlines significant provisions in using facial recognition technology such as tests to prevent discriminatory effects and human review of decisions based on the technology.

Portland, Oregon is considering a strict ban on the technology’s use not only by private businesses but also by the government. California, New Hampshire, and Oregon all restrict police body cameras from using facial recognition. On the other side of the coin, some police forces in northern Texas do use facial recognition.

Federally, the Department of Homeland Security had considered requiring facial recognition checkpoints for US citizens and Green Card holders entering and exiting the country. Due to public outcry, the plan was eventually abandoned. Yet, a recent US Government Accountability Office report asserts that the federal government does plan to expand their use of facial recognition.

FREE TRIAL

While the current trend can be considered a victory for local democracy (as those directly affected by the regulations are the ones who make the rules), it is a huge headache for big business. At the moment, companies such as Facebook and Google have the option of either skirting more stringent facial recognition regulations (at a significant financial cost) or maintaining blanket policies and addressing legal issues as they arise (also at great financial cost).

Social Media’s Facial Recognition Troubles

For some time now, major technology companies like Facebook and Google, which employ facial recognition to sort and categorize images, have been defending themselves against litigation made possible by the passage of BIPA. Facebook, for its part, has sought to amend the law (and other comparable measures) at the legislative level. They have been unsuccessful thus far.

The ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project’s Nathan Freed Wessler lauded the Facebook-BIPA ruling as “a strong recognition of the dangers of unfettered use of face surveillance technology[.]”” Wessler continued with “The capability to instantaneously identify and track people based on their faces raises chilling potential for privacy violations at an unprecedented scale.”

In the case of Facebook, the issue stems from the company’s “tag suggestions” tool. Tag recommendations analyze photographs and classifies facial traits, producing and storing facial templates that enable Facebook to recognize persons in other users’ photos. Because photo uploads to Facebook are frequently geo-tagged, this generates a record of when a certain person was in a particular location.

LEARN MORE

Facebook argued that its customers did not suffer any concrete harm as a result of the company’s use of face recognition. However, the 9th Circuit Panel considered that injury can be concrete even when it is not visible. Additionally, the 9^th Circuit Panel underlined the heightened risk of personal privacy breaches brought about by evolving technology, reflecting similar worries raised by the Supreme Court.

Their judgement makes it abundantly clear that Facebook’s use of face recognition technologies “invades an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.”

In Conclusion

There is considerable uncertainty surrounding the implementation of facial recognition software. If you’re a business considering using it innocuously for customer verification, you’re putting yourself and your company into a potentially dangerous situation.

Given the recent federal study confirming that many facial recognition applications suffer from racial bias and inaccuracies, as well as the potential for damaging lawsuits, regulatory issues, and reputational harm, the potential for devastating lawsuits, regulatory issues, and reputational harm is immense.

However, the “selfie ID photo” verification method used by Konfirmi does not rely on facial recognition. Rather it enables a simple method of automating ID verification while also protecting your business from lawsuits, regulatory issues, and reputational damage associated with facial recognition.

As senior policy analyst at the ACLU, Jay Stanley warned about facial recognition “One false match can lead to missed flights, lengthy interrogations, watchlist placements, tense police encounters, false arrests, or worse.”