192.com Business Services | Compliance Guide

Age Restriction: A 192 Compliance Guide for Online Retailers

You could be a gaming operator offering online poker games, maybe a wine merchant selling alcohol online or an ecommerce website trading knives...

Whatever your business, if you are selling age restricted goods you should be ensuring you are complying with the laws of the land and also the regulation and best practice for your sector.

This guide aims to set out some of the areas where age restrictions come into play and describes the legislation and compliance issues within each sector. We're getting closer to an overall law to cover selling age restricted goods online, so make sure your business is protected....

Illegal in the real world, illegal in the virtual world

Steps are being made to move us closer to an overall law for all online retailers.
Margaret Moran MP recently introduced a bill into parliament called the Online Purchasing of Goods and Services (Age Verification). Moran points out that self-regulation in most cases is not working and we are getting ourselves into a Wild West scenario. 192 worked closely with Margaret Moran and we were quoted within the bill.

When do Age Restrictions Apply?

Age restricted goods and services fall into the following categories:

Online Gaming and Gambling
Alcohol
Downloadable Content
Fireworks
Solvents
Knives
Tobacco

So, What's the Answer?

Click here to see how age verification can help you protect your business.

Online Gaming and Gambling

Gaming age restriction The licensing authorities in the online gaming industry have ensured that operators are focused on player age verification to prevent children from being able to gamble online. Our global databases and ID technologies allow operators to be socially responsible and take all reasonable steps to be sure of customer age during the account creation process.

Alcohol Age Restrictions

The Licensing Act 2003 states:

146 Sale of alcohol to children Alcohol Age Restriction

1) A person commits an offence if he sells alcohol to an individual aged under 18
4) Where a person is charged with an offence under this section by reason of his
own conduct it is a defence that:
i) He had taken all reasonable steps to establish the individual's age

Organisations such as the Wine and Spirit Trade Association are also keen to ensure that merchants are not selling alcohol to customers under the age of 18. We work closely with the WSTA to help their distance selling members carry out age checks on their customers.

Downloadable Content

Downloadable content such as films and games can also have age restrictions. 192 have become an accredited supplier by the BBFC.online. Their scheme ensures that allecommerce websites that allow customers to watch, download or buy media and film content are required to implement customer age verification.

" The BBFC has a strong record in providing enforceable film and media age restrictions for the cinema and the traditional retail sector. BBFC.online member businesses using the internet to retail or deliver film and media content digitally have the same responsibility. We are recommending that members use independent customer age verification solutions from technology experts such as www.192business.com"
Andrew Cooke, Business Manager, BBFC

Fireworks

The Fireworks Regulations 2004 state:

(a) It is illegal to sell adult fireworks to anyone under the age of 18

This relates to both physical and online selling of fireworks.

Solvents

Are you selling aerosols, solvents or other intoxicating substances? solvent age restriction
You should ensure you are checking the age of your customers if you believe the order to be suspicious.

The Intoxicating Substances (supply) Act 1985 states:

Offence of supply of intoxicating substance
It is an offence for a person to supply or offer to supply a substance other than a controlled drug

(1) To a person under the age of eighteen if he knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the substance is, or it's fumes are, likely to be inhaled

Knives

The Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 also stipulates that is prohibited to sell knives to persons under the age of eighteen:

43 Sale etc. of knives and other weapons
(1) The Criminal Justice Act 1988 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 141A(1) (prohibition on sale of knives etc. to persons under sixteen), for "sixteen" substitute "eighteen".

Tobacco

The Health Act 1997 has amended the age that individuals can now buy tobacco and raised this from 16 to 18. This has been amended in The Children and Young Persons (Sales of Tobacco) Order: tobacco age restriction

Substitution of references to age in sections 7 and 102 of the 1933 Act

2. For the word "sixteen" there is substituted the word "eighteen" in the
following provisions of the 1933 Act:
(a) subsections (1) and (2) of, and the side-note to, section 7 (sale of tobacco, etc, to persons undersixteen);