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Verified Adults

Posted by Kim on February 9, 2022, 9:00am

Starting today, adults with active Epic Memberships can choose to go through an age-verification process that will confirm to others that you are, indeed, an actual adult.

This has been a very much requested feature for a long time, and up until now, we haven't had a cost-effective, secure, meaningful way to implement it. But technology has come a long way since we first started talking about it, and we've found a service provider that can review documents from 32 different countries.

What if I don't show my exact age on my user profile? Can I still show others that I am verified as an adult?

Yes, if you choose to go through the verification process, the fact that you are verified as an adult will show on your profile even if you choose not to include your specific age.

What about anonymous characters?

Your exact age will not be displayed on anonymous characters, but if you have been verified as over 18, that information will be visible on the character's profile. Choose "Info" from the top toolbar of a character profile to see whether that user has been age verified.

Will this be required to access the adults only forum?

No. This is optional for those who happen to want it.

Not everyone has money to spare for social media. Others do not have access to necessary documentation. Some only have ID that uses their dead name, and they avoid any contact with those documents if at all possible. Some may be in countries that we don't have the ability to verify documents for yet.

Okay, you won't need it to access the public areas, but can I decide to exclude people who aren't age-verified from my personal profiles/groups?

This will be added as an option shortly. Your personal comfort levels and boundaries are up to you.

How much does it cost?

We are currently offering this to all active Epic Members! If you don't want to be charged monthly, you can still grab just one month on its own, or even just 20 days, which makes the lowest effective cost for it $3.30. Once verified, you get to keep your checkmark for as long as you keep your account, even if your Epic Membership lapses.

What is the process?

  1. You take photos of your photo ID when prompted. A wide variety of photo ID from 32 countries around the world are accepted.
  2. You will take a selfie when prompted. This helps to ensure that the ID is yours, not something slipped out of a parent's wallet or otherwise stolen.
  3. Our ID verification partner sends us a confirmation of your DOB and an assessment of likelihood that the documents are genuine and belong to the submitter, usually in 5 minutes or less.
  4. At no time will any of your documentation touch our own Server, and as soon as the verification check has been completed, we tell our ID verification provider to purge all of your images and personal data from their system. They are required to comply within 4 days.
  5. For the most detailed information, please see our verification servicer provider's own FAQ: https://support.stripe.com/questions/common-questions-about-stripe-identity

Many other questions about this process are answered in our Age Verification FAQ: https://www.rprepository.com/help/age-verification

As ever, please report all bugs (or suspected bugs!) using the bug report form :)

Post tags: Feature Explanations

Comments

Sanne

February 12, 2022
11:55pm

To people having trouble getting clear pictures taken, make sure you:

- clean the camera lens, they can get smudgy!
- are in a properly lit area, turn on an extra light or move to a window during daytime
- use a phone camera over a webcam where possible, especially if your webcam is older or has lower quality

@Redrose: I don't know when you can try again, Kim will have to let you know, but I hope the above can help if you need to go through the process again. :)

Redrose

February 12, 2022
7:48pm

Mine also keeps coming back as blurry! But it’s a clear picture. And now it says I’ve tried too many times. When does this open back up?

@ Saturninum
@kim

Kim

February 12, 2022
12:28pm

@Hades - I understand your concern. I shared many of the same concerns in deciding how to offer this. This is the lowest and the most amount of retro-activity I am reasonably able to offer this service at and have it be sustainable.

Kruhee

February 12, 2022
2:05am

This is cool! I did it using my phone because it's just easier that way lol. Thanks for the new feature!!! :D

Hades_

February 11, 2022
8:10pm

Not the exact cost, but something that works both on your end as a cover all and on the users end for their attempts. $1.50 or 2$ where even the community members who are offering to pay for others could have an easier time giving their incredible generosity for the users here who can't afford to pay, don't have access to pay methods, or documents, or even those who avoid documents with dead names.

My reason for this isn't to stop rpr from having money for cover all at all, but rather an affordable method for both ends that can help stop the inevitable pay wall that cuts off a part of the community from interacting with the other part of the adult community due to these circumstances.

It just feels a little like a pay-to-win/play situation , which I know isn't the intention of anyone nor you. It's just an unfortunate side effect to the situation with the costs and fees that comes with these things.

I think this feature is a great option and am all for it as I accepted Wilts incredible generosity first hand and can't thank them enough for what they and many others are jumping to do.

Websites like RPR aren't designed to be a for-profit grounding and I doubt it makes enough money monthly to be considered profitable with what it costs to host a domain, pay for servers, your own maintenance work you do alone, the art, hosting etc. Rpr costs money to run, and I don't expect you to be up for laying down the receipt costs of what everything costs to run because that isn't anyone's business but yours. Sites have tried showing those things in the past to their communities and have it backfire immensely because you can't expect an entire community to fully understand what money is generated and what money is put on the back end to keep the site running for slower months.

Regardless of if RPR did make some sort of profit or not, it doesn't matter.

My only goal is a way to make the pay-to-play wall between two parts to the adult community as narrow a gap as possible. Nothing more and nothing less. :)

Kim

February 11, 2022
10:04am

@Demi -Because of something called the velocity of money, and how it's a truism that people and businesses with less money have a higher velocity. Past purchases went to cover past costs.

This is a new service. Past polling of the membership indicated I could successfully have charged 10 or even up to 20 for it and still have it widely adopted. I decided against having it as a profit center and instead have put the most accessible price tag on it I reasonably can. In fact, it decreases the initial profit margin for the site on epicness.

@Hades - it sounds like you want a token that lets you verify for exactly the cost of doing one verification. I considered this, and decided against it, and here's why: Some sail through the verification process without a hitch in their stride. Others end up having to try 3 or more times before it works, and we're charged for each of those attempts.

I opted against charging individuals for those individual attempts because if the AI declines your ID because it couldn't read through glare on the ID or some other seemingly random issue it has, it would be very annoying and disappointing to have to just keep buying those tokens over and over.

I decided that if attached to even temporary Epicness we could spread out/absorb some of the costs for people who had bad luck that wasn't their fault, and it would be a lot less misery inducing for everyone. Including me, who would have to explain why I couldn't offer a refund on a failed verification over and over again every month. Spreading out costs is not everyone's favorite method of running things, but having a consistently low and predictable price for everyone seemed best to me.

I understand being disappointed that there has to be some kind of pay wall for something many view as a safety feature. But any way you slice it, this is not a profit-generator for us.

Madam

February 11, 2022
7:11am

Awesome news, thank you for the hard work! I’ve been really looking forward to a feature like this.

Hades_

February 11, 2022
6:42am

Maybe you can also add an item to the shop that reflects the cost of the stripe fee for a user like the prices of the ribbons and packaging that's there that could be a 1 time purchase for just the verification and not have it implement epicness?

Demilicious

February 11, 2022
6:29am

This may have been brought up before in the comments, but why not offer a lack of pay wall for people who have previously already paid for, let's say 2+ years more of epicness, but it has currently run out?

I know that Stripe costs per transaction, heck so does every service if you are listed as a business. But if the paywall is so low as $3.30 (and that's not to say what the actual Stripe cost is) and it's understood that not everyone can cover it for such a thing - why not have this as an option?

To be clear though, I'm not asking someone to pay for me, I just want to ask this question, because Kim, you can see payment & items bought history. Why not pay that forward? And if not via historical epicness purchases, why not $100+ in historical purchases?

Also, shoutout to people offering to pay for others- total Rockstars! 💘

Lucretire

February 11, 2022
6:18am

I'll also toss my hat into the free epic for verification ring. If anyone needs an oil to verify their profile, let me know, and I'll get on it after work!

Sin-fonie

February 11, 2022
3:41am

Also @everyone who doesn't have epic:
Some people already offered it, I will do so as well.
If anyone needs epic status to get verified, just shoot me a PM (as I will maybe miss it if it's just here)
I will gladly offer to send some oils to people who can't afford it otherwise! ^_^

Sin-fonie

February 11, 2022
3:39am

@Kim
Oh, now it's there :D Thank you!

Atheist

February 11, 2022
2:42am

'Aaaayyy! This is fantastic. As soon as I get a day off I will be all over this. Thank you for making this possible. And know that we appreciate these updates despite the headaches they cause. Your hard work goes a long way. ❤

Roxy

February 11, 2022
1:36am

I managed to verify mine with spanish ID, it took me a few attempts because it said the document was blurry, when it wasn't.
I finally managed it by taking the pictures outside the house with a much better natural ilumination and it worked at the first try! Just in case someone else is struggling with it, try that out ^^

Nettle

February 10, 2022
4:30pm

If anyone needs epic membership for age verification purposes, I can spot it to some folks. I understand why it can't be made free, but I'll be happy to help out some people.

Kim

February 10, 2022
12:12pm

I'm unable to offer it for free as it is not free for us; we pay a fee every time someone attempts a document verification, regardless of whether it is approved or denied.

Again, you only need to be Epic to go through the verification process. A single day of Epicness like what you might get out of a valentine's candy box will work to let you into the process. Once verified, you get to keep your checkmark forever.

@sin-fonie Lemme look into that for you! It should have given you the check immediately.

BrandyCat

February 10, 2022
8:59am

This is AMAZING, Kim!!! Thank you SO MUCH!!! I did it right off the bat and it worked flawlessly. I am so pleased.

Silas

February 10, 2022
7:44am

@Hadelicious - it's likely because the integration with stripe costs a fee per user. I can spot you a month of epic if you want to get verified. :) lmk

Sin-fonie

February 10, 2022
6:06am

aaaand another question, sorry XD
How long does it take from the message "age verification successful" until it appears on my profile?

Sanne

February 9, 2022
11:35pm

I'm so, so, so happy with this feature. I do my best to check I'm playing with adults in RPs where this matters, but having this extra layer is going to make things so much more reassuring. :D Thank you so much for implementing this!