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Digital Age Verification replacing Age Gates for better compliance

Oliver Smith
August 21, 2020
4 minutes read
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Age verification is one of the trending snd sensitive topics these days, especially in the business industry. With the technology advancing every passing day and availability of the internet and smart devices at almost every home is alarming for minors. According to a survey, 53% of the children in the US own smartphones by the age of 11 and 84% of teenagers having phones.

Online Age Verification

The significant ratio of minors immersing themselves in advanced technological experience raises a critical challenge for businesses to incorporate adequate age checks for minor protection. The demand for secure age verification had spiked significantly in the past few years when organisations started shifting their operation online. With this paradigm shift, multiple incidents have been reported in the past, highlighting minors access to age-restricted products, services and content.

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One such accident took place a few years ago when a 16-year-old boy brutally stabbed schoolboy with the knife that he bought online from Amazon, taking his life. Taking into account such incidents, regulators are becoming stringent in preventing children online from accessing age-restricted products and sites. They are continuously finding new ways to deal with organisations failing to protect minors online.

Age verification regulations demanding better compliance

According to the CDC report, alcohol is the key factor behind the death of people under age 21.

More than 450,000 children aged between 11 and 16 regularly place bets as per Young People and Gambling 2018 report. These statistics pointing towards the dark picture of children assessing age-restricted products and services have enforced regulatory authorities to take control of the situation and come up with age verification laws.

Governments in different countries are coming with age verification laws to protect children.

The U.S has passed the law for selling age-restricted products and services. The President approved the legislation revising the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act on December 20, 2019. It raised the minimum age from 18 to 21 years for the sale of tobacco products. According to Nicotine Vapour Products (NVP) Law of Scotland, it is prohibited to sell or use nicotine vapour products and tobacco under the age of 18. Moreover, it mandates businesses to check identity cards of the buyers who seem younger than 25.

Age Gates – A Thing of Past

Concerning age verification laws organisations are implementing age gates on their website to prevent minors from accessing adult content or age-restricted goods. But are they efficient enough to restrict underage users from proceeding further? No, they are not anymore. The reason is age gates rely on the honesty of the user to enter their date of birth or check a box to verify their age. You never know if the users are honest or not since nothing more is there to authenticate the information provided by them.

age gate

Prove your Age Online with Shufti Pro’s Age Verification Service

As per statistics, businesses can’t rely on the simple age checks. These days online businesses are trying to cope with “how to create age requirements on the website with credit card verification”. The answer is simple to implement sophisticated age checker that ensures not only the age but the identity of the individual as well to comply with age verification and KYC & AML Regulations.

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Shufti Pro offers an AI-powered age verification solution for businesses to verify the age of the user through government-issued identity documents – an ID card, driving license, and passport. All user have to do is enter the date of birth and display their ID card in front of a webcam or mobile camera to get their age verified. Shufti Pro’s advanced solution automatically extracts the data from the ID document through OCR extraction and authenticates the fetched information and face of the user. This service can verify age within seconds, ensuring seamless customer experience.

Disclaimer: No warranty is herein provided that the information contained in this document is accurate, up-to-date, and/or complete. In no circumstance(s), does such information constitute legal or any other advice. Any person who intends to use, rely, pass-on, or re-publish the information contained herein in any way is solely responsible for the same. We suggest to verify the information and/or obtain expert advice independently if required.

Latest News

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1803 Arrested in Money Laundering Crackdown Coordinated by 27 Countries
Online Age Verification
Age verification regulations demanding better compliance
Age Gates – A Thing of Past
Prove your Age Online with Shufti Pro’s Age Verification Service
In a major money laundering crackdown, European police identified more than 18,000 money mules, arresting a total of 1803 individuals.

On December 1, the seventh European Money Mule Action (EMMA 7) concluded after two and a half months. 27 countries were involved in this initiative along with Europol, Eurojust, the European Banking Federation (EBF), the FinTech FinCrime Exchange, and major companies from the private sector including Microsoft, Western Union, and Fourth line.

The EMMA has been operational since 2016 and the purpose of this initiative was not only to identify money launderers but also the sources of their illicit gains.

According to Europol, the EMMA initiative is the biggest international operation of its kind, where 400 banks successfully reported 7000 fraudulent transactions. As a result, losses counting up to €70m ($79m) were prevented and 324 recruiters were identified.

Europol also claims that money mules are used for money laundering and a variety of online scams, including e-commerce fraud, phishing, SIM-swapping, and man-in-the-middle attacks. These claims are based on the leads that came in from police intelligence and private-sector reports.

Immigrants, students, and those in difficult financial situations are often targeted by giving the hope of easy money. They are approached through various methods including job adverts on social media.

Fraud experts and police issued warnings of an increase in the recruitment of money mules in the pre-pandemic time. A spike was seen in these scams when many lost their jobs during the COVID outbreak.

Recruitment of money mules and the subsequent crimes have called for the police to run regular awareness campaigns like Europol’s “Don’t be a mule” initiative.

Suggested read: Money Laundering Ring Pushed $4bn through 60 HSBC Accounts within 2 Years

Recent Posts

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Top 5 Cybersecurity Trends to Look Out for in 2022
Online Age Verification
Age verification regulations demanding better compliance
Age Gates – A Thing of Past
Prove your Age Online with Shufti Pro’s Age Verification Service
With 2022 just around the corner, new developments in cybersecurity are already beginning to take shape. Considering the 600% upshot in cybercrime amid the pandemic, the urgency for cybersecurity is further augmented. Given the dependency of modern businesses on digital solutions, it is safe to say that the corporate world may undergo monumental upgrades. New regulations for cybersecurity updates are inevitable to combat the increasing number of cyberattacks.

According to reports, cyberattacks contributed to losses of up to $6 trillion in 2021 alone, which is the single largest economic upset in history. By 2025, cybercrimes are expected to cost the world $10.5 trillion. As governments work towards elevating their cybersecurity posture, the key criteria here is the extent to which businesses can adopt the best practices.

1. Phishing Attacks to Remain a Major Issue

Although Canada is far ahead as compared to the rest of the world in mitigating cyber threats, 78% of Canadian organizations still faced a cyberattack in 2020. This indicates the catastrophic effect of cyberattacks with numbers rising in the negative direction. The most common type of cyberattacks took the form of ransomware and phishing. Looking at the trends of 2021, it’s clear that hackers and malware are becoming advanced with improvements in technology.

A rise in phishing attacks was observed this year, as fake COVID-19 vaccination drives led to e-commerce fraud where credit card information was collected by bogus online shops. The number of overall data breaches recorded by September 2021 was 1,291, which had already exceeded the total of 2020. In order to avoid becoming the victims of phishing sites and emails, businesses must elevate their identity verification measures and conduct employee training. For this reason, the demand for cybersecurity professionals will further increase in 2022, as companies will need their guidance to stay ahead of their competition.

2. Internal Threats & Cloud Attacks

Trojan horses are rightfully named as they can effectively wipe out a large amount of data. However, the origins of all cyberattacks are not malware, as statistics show that 15 to 25 percent of data breaches were due to the involvement of corrupt employees or business partners. In the coming times, virtual workplaces will further gain prominence and companies will need to be more careful at the same time. Therefore, it is becoming essential for businesses to control access levels for new employees, freelancers, and third-party suppliers.

As the pandemic forced businesses to improvise and follow remote working procedures, a lot of data sharing, communication, and other activities are being conducted through cloud services. Although this enables businesses to stay connected and generate revenue regardless of the location of employees, it has a few drawbacks in terms of cybersecurity. In 2022, cloud services are expected to be used by an increasing number of companies as they strive to adopt virtual or hybrid solutions even after the pandemic’s restrictions.

On one hand, cloud services allow scalability and flexibility in business processes. On the other hand, they create risks of cyber attacks and data breaches. 2020 saw more data breaches through cloud systems as compared to on-premises storage. This means that banks and financial institutions will have to take necessary countermeasures to secure their cloud systems and confidential information. In order to avoid data breaches, businesses must not leave out any gaps in their security systems and raise awareness among their staff to follow the best practices for data privacy.

3. Artificial Intelligence as a Saviour

Considering the cybersecurity trends for 2022, artificial intelligence has become increasingly necessary to establish a strong frontier against cyberattacks. In 2020, 47.3% of companies had a medium to high-security automation level, which was a significant increase as compared to 39% in 2019. The basic concept behind AI comes into play here, as experts suggest that the higher the level of automation, the more secure a business system will be.

An officer in charge of security can make errors like falling prey to a phishing email, but today’s advanced AI systems can easily detect such attacks. Automation of security systems also reduces the risk of internal threats as a lesser number of humans will be able to leak confidential information. Moreover, AI allows much more accuracy in analyzing risk as compared to humans.

4. Securing the Supply Chains

A number of cybersecurity concerns are raised due to loopholes and insufficient security protocols in supply chains. These ultimately give way to numerous false allegations on vendors and third parties. However, the industry has responded to this with a positive approach to improve vendor management as a cybersecurity measure. This is being considered as one of the key focus areas for 2022, starting from the disclosure of business information. Despite cloud service providers claiming that a centralized storage system is far more secure, the coming year will prove that this is not true.

As seen from reports of cyberattacks involving cloud storage, the current business operations actually turn out to be the opposite of secure. Businesses will need to incorporate KYB (Know Your Business) measures to verify their partners, third-party vendors, and suppliers. Unless companies put it all on the table at the start of the collaboration, they are welcoming cyber attackers to breach their data. For example, such exposure was created by Amazon in a reported event where AWS appliance installations were hacked. Therefore, it’s clear that 2022 will see more cyber threats unless work is done to improve security.

5. Identity-based Security Protocols

As the techniques of fraudsters continue to evolve, personal information on digital platforms is becoming increasingly vulnerable to cybercrime. To overcome the theft of financial information, digital banking platforms will need to incorporate identity verification measures. With the new methods of hybrid work and the transfer of major business data to cloud applications, the importance of identity verification is further justified. Although the concept in itself is nothing new, the urgency for cybersecurity will force its adoption in companies.

As most cyberattacks begin with a stolen identity, managing the access protocols will be a key aspect in maintaining a business reputation. Misuse of credentials and data breaches will mean the end of small businesses if the modern cyber attackers capitalize on the loopholes in their system. Business directories and employee registries must be configured with security barriers like 2-factor authentication and transaction monitoring systems should be incorporated to detect suspicious activities.

Key Takeaways

Sooner or later, banks, financial institutions, and businesses will need robust identity verification solutions to eliminate the root cause of cyberattacks. Onboarding of legitimate individuals can only be ensured when the company knows who they are every time they try to access the system. Based on the trends, data breaches and ransomware are not going to be eliminated any time soon.

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Digital Age Verification replacing Age Gates for better compliance

Online Age Verification

Age verification regulations demanding better compliance

Age Gates – A Thing of Past

Prove your Age Online with Shufti Pro’s Age Verification Service

1. Phishing Attacks to Remain a Major Issue

2. Internal Threats & Cloud Attacks

3. Artificial Intelligence as a Saviour

4. Securing the Supply Chains

5. Identity-based Security Protocols

Key Takeaways

Let’s prove your

customer’s identity

with Shuftipro.

Let’s prove your customer’s

identity with Shuftipro.