Age verification is solved.
The industry just doesn't know it yet.
Every solution on the market trades your users' privacy for compliance, or compliance for convenience. ShareRing does neither.
Every other approach gets something wrong
The industry has been trying to solve age verification with the wrong tool: identity documents. The result is a privacy disaster that leaves merchants exposed.
Self-declaration is meaningless
Asking a user to type their date of birth provides zero assurance. 68% of minors who attempt access using a DOB field succeed. It satisfies no modern regulation.
Document uploads create breach risk
Uploading a passport or licence scan means the merchant now holds your most sensitive personal details. One breach and you face GDPR fines, regulatory action, and destroyed user trust.
Third-party KYC is costly and repetitive
Per-check fees add up fast. Users must re-verify for every new platform. And the KYC provider still ends up holding your users' data on their servers.
How ShareRing stacks up
Five dimensions that matter to merchants and users: privacy, accuracy, compliance, and friction.
← Swipe to see all →
| Criteria | Self-declaration | Credit card | Doc upload | Age estimation | 3rd-party KYC | ShareRingNO CONTEST |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Privacy: nothing personal sent to merchant | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ | ✓ |
| Verified accuracy | ✗ | ~ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Regulatory compliance | ✗ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Low user friction | ✓ | ~ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| No merchant data liability | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Reusable across merchants | · | · | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| 190+ country ID support | · | · | ~ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ |
✓ Full ~ Partial ✗ Not supported
Convenient. But not proven.
Age Estimation is the most widely deployed approach right now. It is also the one regulators are moving away from fastest.
Probabilistic, not proven
Estimation models output a predicted probability or age range , not a verified fact. They cannot deterministically prove age. A 16-year-old who looks 20 passes. An 18-year-old with bad lighting fails.
Easy to spoof
Estimation tools can be fooled by deepfakes, synthetic images, and altered photos. No liveness binding, no document check , just a camera pointed at anything that looks like a face.
Demographic bias
Performance degrades under poor lighting, for darker skin tones, and for younger faces , exactly the demographic these systems are meant to protect. The AATT found variance of up to 8 years.
No audit trail
No persistent ID or verification token is created. Regulators cannot audit or reproduce decisions. When challenged in court or by a compliance body, there is nothing to show.
The world's first large-scale age assurance test
Commissioned by the Australian Government, the AATT tested approximately 50 vendors across age estimation, age verification, age inference, parental controls, and hybrid systems , benchmarked for accuracy, privacy, bias, and user experience.
Governments are moving from estimation to verification
Three major jurisdictions have made the same call: probability is not enough. Evidence-based verification is the standard.
Platforms must demonstrate "reasonable steps" to verify user age. The AATT findings are now cited as the benchmark. Age estimation alone does not satisfy the standard. Fines up to A$46M.
App stores must enforce verified age, not estimated. The law explicitly targets probability-based approaches as insufficient. Other states have introduced similar legislation.
The European Data Protection Board's statement on age assurance explicitly encourages robust, evidence-based methods. Estimation-only solutions face growing legal exposure under GDPR frameworks.
Six steps. Zero data shared.
Walk through the complete ShareRing verification flow and see exactly what moves, and what doesn't.
Things people get wrong
Tap each card to see the real answer.
The case in three numbers
Ready to get age verification right?
Book a demo and we'll show you how ShareRing integrates into your existing flow in under a day.
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