The Age Verification
Providers Association
Making the Internet “age-aware”
The global trade body for independent providers of privacy-protecting, standards-based, age assurance technology.
We have reached a tipping point where all but the most innocuous of websites need to know the age – not the identity – of their users to remain compliant with a tsunami of new legislation, including:
- Europe’s GDPR, Digital Services Act and Video Sharing Platform laws
- Age Appropriate Design Codes in the UK, California and a potentially other US States
- Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in the USA
- Australia’s Online Safety Act
The Age Verification Providers Association is a not-for-profit global trade body representing 26 organisations who provide age assurance solutions (both age verification and age estimation), proportionate to the risk of harm.
The AVPA was formed in 2018 and is growing rapidly as the age and identity provider industry takes off. For information on our membership categories and how to join, click here.
As an association, we work to:
- Inform and educate the public, industry and media on age verification and age estimation solutions and technology.
- Promote a positive image of privacy-preserving age assurance and the indpendent sector which delivers it.
- Represent the industry to regulators and law makers for the advancement of best practice, international standards, interoperability and socially-responsible age verification policy.
The Association is a leading member of the euCONSENT consortium, delivering European-wide infrastructure for online age verification and parental consent.
See www.euCONSENT.eu for more information and to subscribe for updates.
WHY AGE VERIFICATION?
Protection
It is a natural instinct to safeguard our children as they grow up. We place limitations on our children for their own safety, protecting them, restricting their access to activities or content that are deemed unsuitable for their age.
Law
Protections are already written into law – hundreds of categories of products and services are age-restricted, from products such alcoholic beverages and lottery tickets through to medicines and fireworks. Law-makers worldwide are catching up with the offline world and affording the same protections for children online.
Social Responsibility
It is not only parents’ responsibility to protect their children, but all adults. The most vulnerable children in our society are often those whose parents are not in a position to protect them. One would have little sympathy for a merchant selling alcohol or cigarettes to children on the grounds that their parents were not there to stop the transaction.
Technology
To ensure that children do not get access to places on the Internet they should not, organisations of all kinds need to confirm the age of the individuals they interact with. Our members provide the technologies that allow organisations offering age-restricted goods, services, functionality and content to stay compliant.
Audit & Certification Members
Associate Members support the objects of the Association and its code of conduct, but are not direct providers of Age Verification services themselves.
Reciprocal Memberships
The AVPA is also proud to have reciprocal arrangements with the following organisations around the world:
