§ 129B.003.Reasonable Age Verification Methods

The compliance standard, offering three routes.

"Digital identification" is defined in the section as information stored on a digital network that may be accessed by a commercial entity and that serves as proof of the identity of an individual.

An entity shall require an individual to either provide digital identification, or comply with a commercial age verification system that verifies age using government-issued identification or a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data.

The transactional data route is the one designed to avoid document uploads. The definitions provision defines that term to include mortgage, education, and employment records — data that establishes an adult exists without a photograph of an identity document.

Commercial verification services build on exactly that: a match against records that only an adult would have.

"Commercially reasonable" leaves room for methods to evolve, which matters in a field where verification technology changes faster than statutes.

Read this with the retention prohibition in the preceding section. The chapter requires identification and forbids keeping it, so verification must be transactional — checked and discarded.

The privacy objection to age verification is not answered entirely by that. A user must still transmit identifying information to someone, and the record of having visited a particular category of site is created at the moment of verification whatever happens to it afterwards.

That tension is the substance of the constitutional argument the chapter has attracted.