Age Verification Answers

Great solution and one I'd very much support. It is in the interests of credit card companies to support methods such as you suggest, it makes their products cleaner looking anyway and gives them an extra level of advertisement.

I mean it shouldn't be difficult for merchants to flag a credit card holder as being under or over 18.

The thing is, this kind of flagging requires that CC companies implement it on their network for merchants to use. Given that CC companies are agressively marketing to those under 18, I just don't see this happening without huge market pressure to do so.

It also puts them in the difficult position of verifying a person's age, and putting them in the hot-seat if they fail to do so accurately. Think along the lines of "Little Timmy was able to buy ALCOHOL on teh interwebs because you guys thought he was an adult!" I doubt any CC company would touch that with a 10-foot card swiper.

Not to mention: If you think SL implementing age verification has stirred up a poo-storm, imagine VISA sending a letter to all their cardholders saying, "You have to verify your age with us or future purchases of beer at the local convenience store using your VISA Credit/Debit card will be declined until your age has been verified. Don't even think of going to the 'adult novelty' store."

In fact, VISA is going in the exact opposite direction when it insists that merchants never use the credit card for age verification. The link to VISA's merchant policy prohibiting age verification has been posted multiple times here and on the SL blog. It's just not gonna happen, folks.

So has the link to SSN's not being a form of identification but there's no way Visa are going to give someone credit without knowing their identity, they do checks like anyone else and in the UK camelot won't accept debit cards that people under 16 can obtain for their national lottery games.

Visa have the power to say whether a cardholder is over 18, all LL and Visa need to do is come to an arrangement that says that Visa can release these details. It's really not that difficult a concept.

Perhaps it should be made to happen? Internet transactions of any sort involving "minors" in the legal sense are the issue that has dragged SL - among others - into "age verification" controversies. Identity has to be established at the time a card is issued and is the logical place to start. It is a lot less contentious than assigning sensitive personal data to yet another and much smaller online entity like one of those "verification" companies. In fact, I suspect that in EU and western Commonwealth countries it will be very difficult to make that third party process work. The privacy and security issues are insurmountable, or can be made to be in a political context, and as a great deal more than SL is involved I think it would be made so. As for VISA and the rest how long could they resist, if accused of facilitating underage access to Harmful Things by refusing to flag their cards?

No, its not a difficult concept. And yet, Visa refuses to do it. I seriously doubt that LL or any other single merchant can convince them to do it.

Visa's documentation (page 53) explicitly says, "Request the cardholder’s Visa account number only as payment for goods or services. The merchant must not use the account number for age verification or any purpose other than payment." (emphasis mine).

As for "coming to an agreement", where does the cardholder fit in this agreement? Again, if VISA starts telling customers that they will release age-related data about them, customers would howl far louder than the collective voices of SL Residents could ever begin to be.


Visa have effectively removed themselves from the issue by placing the onus of age verification on the merchant. To test this, give your credit card to an underage person and tell them to go buy beer. If the store sells it to them, it's the store that gets in trouble, not the credit card company. It's the merchant that's facilitating access, not the credit card company.

Hypothetical plans for getting the credit card companies to implement age verification for LL or anyone else is a huge long shot at best. This isn't really going to get us any closer to understanding Linden Labs pending implementation of age verification.

It's all hypothetical if only because it's a very long chance LL pay serious attention to these threads. On their record they seem to cherrypick comments supportive of decisions they've already taken. However maybe discussion gives people ideas which may be of use elsewhere.

Assuming the terms of use of credit cards is carved in stone is unnecessary. Card companies are subject to legislation. Results of demands for regulation of aspects of the internet, especially highly charged issues like underage access, depend on how aggressively large players in the "internet industry" defend relatively open-access arrangements. The "immersive" net, with its user-created content, is going to get regulated one way or another. Linden's response so far mentions engaging another company purely for the purposes of "age verification", including where cards are used for payment. Card companies will not indicate whether or not a holder is adult or a minor unless directed to by law, despite their making the commercial transaction possible, and despite having the data like date of birth available. So yet another company would have to be used at whatever extra cost; that company would have to be able to establish client "identity" all over again, at whatever extra risk to the privacy of client data.

I think many SL residents will not be prepared to run the risk.

Visa have that in place to prevent youngsters using someone else's card in person as a means of id. We're not talking about in person transactions here. No credit card company takes a "Not in person" transaction as being 100% proof that that is the person making the transaction, that's why I sometimes get calls from my card issuer to confirm if I did make a transaction online.

However the world is changing and online shopping is becoming more and more popular. A simple (optional) flag to say that the card holder is over 18 should be something companies like LL can ask the card companies to work with them on, on the proviso that the customer ticks a box when signing up for that information to be shared, we're not even talking exact age here.

SSN's explicitly say they are not a form of ID, yet they are being asked for, so I fail to see the difference in that line of thought. However for me as a customer, my CC statement shows me an audit trail, I feel much more secure with that than I do with sharing extra information. Working with my existing information is more desireable for me as a customer.

There are places that would consider a piece of plastic, with nothing human-readable but an embossed name on it, as proof of ID? That's one quaint world, that is.

You should see my paper based driving licence!