Demystifying Age Assurance & Parental Consent:
A One-Stop Resource
Are you struggling to comply with Age Assurance and Verifiable Parental Consent (VPC) regulations? This guide can help.
TrustElevate can help legal counsels, policy, and compliance teams navigate the ever-changing landscape of age verification and parental consent requirements.
Many companies are aware of new standards and the rapidly evolving regulatory regimes surrounding VPC. They know there are providers offering solutions, but may feel ill-equipped to evaluate the available services.
This guide will outline:
Key considerations for Age Assurance and VPC compliance.
Different approaches to age assurance - verification and estimation - and parental consent.
Evaluating third-party Age Assurance and VPC providers.
Best practices for implementing a compliant and user-friendly VPC solution.
By understanding these topics, you can ensure your company meets its legal obligations while protecting children online.The technical trials of TrustElevate's solution advanced the programme of work ultimately built to lead up to the roll-out of our age assurance technology.
Our solution demonstrated that VoCO, as envisioned by DCMS and the Home Office was indeed possible and sustainable in the context of the digital ecosystem.
TrustElevate has over 14 years of experience in the Age Assurance and Verifiable Parental Consent space. We actively contribute to industry standards:
Developed the PAS 1296 Age Checking Code of Practice, published by the British Standards Institute.
Contributing to the ISO/IEC 27566 Age Assurance Framework.
Leading the technical authorship of the Verifiable Parental Consent and Vulnerable Person Care standard.
TrustElevate is a trusted advisor, offering a comprehensive solution that goes beyond what individual services provide.
TrustElevate offers hands-on consulting services to assess an organizations current compliance to avoid significant penalties and fines. We also offer ongoing support to ensure continued legal compliance with ever-changing regulations.
Reach out to us for an free initial consultation.
Fragmented Regulations: Compliance requirements vary across jurisdictions and business sectors. You need a solution that offers:
Global Compliance: Ensures adherence to regulations across various territories.
Aggregation & Streamlining: Combines various services, eliminating redundancy and maximizing reach.
Privacy Concerns: There is often a mistaken assumption that age assurance and verifiable parental consent require collection and handling of large amounts of personal data.
TrustElevate provides and also partners with privacy preserving technologies of the market - see diagrams that explain Hashing and Zero Knowledge Proofs.
User privacy is paramount too TrustElevate: Our solutions leverage advanced techniques like hashing and zero-knowledge proofs to ensure user data remains secure while enabling effective age verification and VPC.
Friction and Drop-off: There can be concerns about the introduction of friction to the onboarding flow.
TrustElevate will talk you through how federated, verifiable credentials and decentralized models reduce this friction, build consumer trust and enable revenue protection
Inclusivity, Children in Care, Refugees, Foster Care - Concerns about users in specific categories being unable to participate due to the requirement for age assurance and parental consent.
TrustElevate adheres to and will appraise you of the laws and codes of practice supporting normalcy in loco parentis (acting as a parent), allowing foster carers to make decisions regarding internet access and use for children in their care. TrustElevate’s solutions cater for these nuances and provide flexible options to accommodate diverse family structures.
Access Rights, LGBTQI, Sexual and Mental health advice: There is a common misapprehension that age assurance and parental consent might limit access to specific types of content for vulnerable children.
TrustElevate is actively working collaboratively on standards that ensure access to high quality content from reputable sources is accessible anonymously LGBTQI+ issues, sexual health, and mental health. We work with organisations including the Boston Digital Wellness Centre and Harvard Children's Medical Centre and the Inspired internet pledge and integrate with platforms offering such content anonymously, ensuring accessibility for all users.
Mitigating Risk:
TrustElevate’s Multi-Provider Approach: We avoid single points of failure by relying on multiple providers, offering:
Best-in-breed Solutions: Leverage the strengths of various providers for optimal results.
Constant Innovation: Benefit from ongoing advancements within the age assurance landscape and develop new markets safely equipped with a thorough understanding of the pros and cons of different solutions, in the short, medium and long term.
Synthetic data, AI and deep fakes - what do the attendant risks and opportunities mean for your business and those third parties that rely on these and in what ways could these pose a new risks to your business
Compliance Considerations and how to compare provides quickly:
TrustElevate’s services address key areas of Age Assurance and VPC:
Adult-Child Connection Indicators (ACCI): We provide assurance levels that inform you to the confidence you can have that you have obtained consent from the authorised holder of parental responsibility for a child
Verifiable Parental Responsibility (VPR): Our solutions verify a parent's or guardian's legal authority over a child. When we provide an ACCI score, we continuously poll to give you a trust uplift when we attain VPR.
Verifiable Parental Consent (VPC): We facilitate obtaining verifiable parental consent for data collection or specific activities involving minors.
Verified Age: We provide robust age verification methods to ensure accurate user demographics.
Age estimation Vs Age Verification
KYC (Know Your Customer) & AML (Anti-Money Laundering): We integrate KYC/AML checks for a comprehensive user verification process.
Listen up.
The Data Protection and Privacy Podcast
What The EXPERTS Do Not TELL Us about Data Protection ? Part 22 Dr. Rachel O'Connell CEO of TrustElevate discusses how to create a safer internet for children by verifying the ages of users under 13 and confirming parental responsibility.
Contact Us
Contact us to learn how our Age Assurance and VPC solutions can empower your legal and compliance teams to confidently navigate these complex regulations.
When you contact us, you’ll receive a prompt and personalized response from our team. We will schedule a demo tailored to your specific needs, allowing you to see our solutions in action and how they can benefit your business.