The E-commerce industry is one of the fast-growing industry today. There are associated security and privacy concerns with it. Here we will be focusing on under-age buyers who buy restricted products openly from online stores and have no check on their age. Online retailers selling adult products and services should be careful regarding specifying the consumer traffic to make sure that age-restricted products are not delivered to the under-age community.
For this, online age verification has become a vital step. To avoid minors from getting access to adult products, online age verification can filter out prohibited users and adult ones. Hence streamlining the customer onboarding process while maintaining the security of e-commerce store.
Responsibility of Retailers
E-commerce stores selling alcohol, vapes, e-cigarettes, cannabis, heroin, knives, and even adult video games and DVDs. There is a dire need to take into account serious actions and security over the online website that makes sure that no under-age buyers are trying to access the restricted product from your store. In case of changes of a discrepancy, the store might be subjected to heavy fines and other regulatory penalties. Local regulators are actively examining industries that are lacking online identity verification.
Know Your Customer (KYC) is a process through which an online retailer can conduct online identity verification to make sure that the customer is the one who he says he is. Other than, minor’s access, there are several other security concerns. Identity thieves steal the identities of children to use it on various platforms to perform malicious activities, money laundering, terrorist financing, and gambling are some of them. To combat such malevolent actors, identity verification hs become a primary step towards saving any online business.
Customer Due Diligence (CDD)
CDD is a process to undergo identity verification and helps in ensuring that ‘who is your customer’. It undergoes several checks that can be conducted through document verification, face verification or biometric authentication. In this way, an under0age user can also be identified. CDD is a compliance need for an online business. The retailers who fail to embed the CDD process in business standards are subjected to harsh regulatory penalties which ultimately affects the reputation of the brand.
Age Verification Checks
Online websites have embedded conventional age verification checks that do no serve the purpose. These checks are in the form of just Age Affirmation Pages or checkboxes that online users would have to check to verify age. These illogical methods are dodgeable and cannot prevent minors from accessing inappropriate content online and services.
Stringent age verification should be inserted to encounter the smart tricks of minors. For this, credit card verification can be done at the time pf payment proceedings online, or document verification can be done to make sure that buyers are above the legal age and eligible for buying a particular item online. It can either be done at the time of account registration or while availing a service online every time.
Regulatory Penalties
Local regimes are getting harder around the world. They are serving the purpose of online security and privacy. First of all, age checks are important for children’s safety. Secondly, it is important to consider the SOPs regarding collecting information of children online, local regulators have specified regulations to collect minimal personal data from children and with parental consent. Parents can any time ask to delete the data of their children, revoke it or edit it. Any change in policies must be addressed with parents and retake consent from them. The businesses that fail to comply with these requirements will be directed to severe regulatory penalties.