Age Verification

You may have noticed The Weirding has an age restriction in the TOS. I installed this on the old site many years ago because I was worried about minors accessing something they probably should not. It explains that, while this is not a pornographic site and contains no pornographic materials, it does contain adult language, themes, and other material to which parents might object, and minors probably shouldn't access. Now, this was included back in/around 1999-2000 and has been there since, and the reason I developed it to begin with was due to issues many had with age verification and minors accessing improper content; the age verification issue is not a new one.

Now, after 10+ years, lawmakers in the UK are considering a bill which would force sites which sell certain products meant only for adults to go further with their age verification checks.

A 16-year old was given pre-paid credit cards, which included his real birthday and address, and directed to go online to see how hard it was to purchase AO (Adults Only) goods, including knives, cigarettes, and adult DVDs and video games (among other things). The lad had little to no problems procuring whatever he wished. In fact, while he was able to buy whatever he wanted from all of the sites visited, only three even bothered to ask him to verify his age. On these, he simply lied.

A coalition of children's charities strongly support the bill and say a precedent has already been set with gambling sites.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009