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:
“The confusion of emotions with behavior causes no end of unnecessary trouble to both adults and children. Behavior can be commanded; emotions can’t. An adult can put controls on a child’s behavior—at least part of the time—but how do you put controls on what a child feels? An adult can impose controls on his own behavior—if he’s grown up—but how does he order what he feels?”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.”
—Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970)
“Intimately concerned as we are with the system of Europe, it does not follow that we are therefore called upon to mix ourselves on every occasion, with a restless and meddling activity, in the concerns of the nations which surround us.”
—George Canning (1770–1827)