An Adult Verification System (AVS) also known as an "Age Gate" is a computing system used by a website to confirm that the user attempting to access their website is of the age required (usually by law) to view the website's content, which typically includes sex, nudity, violence or profanity, or Entertainment Software Rating Board rated content
The system is used to attempt to legally protect companies from punishment under laws against (for example) Disseminating pornography to a minor. These systems often use a credit card, and are usually provided by a third-party company; the same AVS company can provide adult verification for multiple websites, thus becoming more user friendly.
In 1999, a particular AVS (Landslide Inc.) was at the center of a police crackdown on internet users viewing child pornography, known as Operation Ore, in which web users using an Landslide's AVS were identified by their financial records when the company which stored the data went into liquidation.
Problems with this system include the ease at which a child may get access to (for example) their parents credit cards, defeating the stated purpose of the system, and that it is easy to use a fake script to defraud users into divulging their credit card number to an individual to use for their own purposes.
Famous quotes containing the words adult, verification and/or system:
“Many more children observe attitudes, values and ways different from or in conflict with those of their families, social networks, and institutions. Yet today’s young people are no more mature or capable of handling the increased conflicting and often stimulating information they receive than were young people of the past, who received the information and had more adult control of and advice about the information they did receive.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)
“A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is direct and simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“Some rough political choices lie ahead. Should affirmative action be retained? Should preference be given to people on the basis of income rather than race? Should the system be—and can it be—scrapped altogether?”
—David K. Shipler (b. 1942)