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Privacy policy

What is CheckMyAge?

There are a number of reasons why websites need to check the age of it's visitors. Such as websites that offer the following:

  • Alcohol
  • Vaping / Smoking
  • Films or Games with violent or Adult content
  • Gambling
  • Knives
  • Social Media
  • Young peoples groups
  • Senior citizen discounts / tickets
  • Country specific content

    • In reality age restrictions are in place for a large number of websites, for example Facebook, in the UK requires you to be at least 13. A website may want to offer a discount to people over 65. A website may want to give information about youth events only for those under 18.

    CheckMyAge was created to provide a free, easy to use 3rd party way for people of all ages to verify how old they are without needing to disclose personal information to numerous websites.

    Once verified we only store your ID code, country and date of birth, that way, in the unlikely event that we are hacked, your date of birth can't be linked to you.

    In the UK, The Digital Economy Bill is expected to come into force at the start of 2020. This UK law will require certain websites with adult content to prove that they have checked their UK visitors age even if the website is not hosted in the UK. Simply asking for a date of birth, to click on a button to say they are over 18 or providing credit card details will not be sufficient.

    Users

    If you want to get a CheckMyAge ID that can be used on numerous websites, you can do it here. You will need a recognised form of photo ID (e.g. Passport or Driving Licence) and a working camera (this website also works on most smart-phones) so we can check you match your photo ID.

    Once you have your photo ID to hand, continue to the verification page.

    Verification

    Currently due to perceived demand, we are excepting only passports for most countries. Please select your country, then select an ID from the list before you continue.
    Passport

    Driving Licence

    PASS (Proof of Age Standards Scheme)

    Young Scot card


    Website Owners

    If you own a website and want a no cost solution to check people's age or country for whatever reason, the simplest way is to ask people for their CheckMyAge ID (also provide a link here for if they don't already have one). Once a visitor has entered their ID, get your web designer to add in an API call to see if its valid.

    For help on how to use our API, please point your developer to our developer help page.

    Frequently asked questions

    I turned 18 today, why can't I buy alcohol?

    This is normally down to two reasons. 1) Our servers are based on UK time, if the website you want to buy from is in Australia or Japan for example, it may take a couple of hours before our time zone catches up. 2) Different countries have differing age limits, to be safe most companies will use the highest age limit if more than one country is involved.

    What information do you share with websites?

    Just simply if you are below or above a specific age. We never share any other information (we don't even store it). We also have checks to stop too many queries being asked to prevent a website from tracking down your exact age.

    How can you offer this service for free?

    We feel it is an important service that needs to be available for free. However, there are costs involved in running this service so depending on demand we may need to put a monthly cap on API calls (with price plans to extend past the cap). We are however committed to keep this as a free service for end users and hobby websites.

    Do you track what websites my ID is used on

    No. The only information we track is who is using our API (the information logged does not include your ID) to profile usage and prevent hacking attempts.