...... Is there a hole that Veratad doesn't fill?
Veratad has been providing age verification services to online tobacco retailers for well over a decade and is one of the oldest most experienced online age/identity verification services available. Their service provides vendors with legal compliance under current laws and they do this discreetly -without- storing personal information or sharing/selling personal information to third parties. I make NETs and purchase the tobacco they're made with from the same online pipe tobacco & cigar vendors I used back when I "smoked", I've been under Veratad's "scrutiny" since their inception and have zero problems or complaints. In most circumstances Veratad only needs a person's name and address to provide age verification that meets current legal requirements, however,
they do allow vendors to set more stringent approval rules than what the law actually requires...
Why would a vendor add additional requirements beyond what Veratad accomplishes? .......
The problem is most vendors
haven't got a clue as to what's
really required under the law or who to trust for handling age compliance issues. In their confusion many vendors decided that
need-it-or-not the more information they collect the better protected from liability they'd be which holds true unless your customer base proves highly reluctant to submitting
unnecessary sensitive personal information
(like I am) and ceases doing business with you.
Some vendors have chosen to use verification services that intentionally sensationalize/
exaggerate the legal requirements for verifying age in order to justify collecting
unnecessary personal information which they
store and then share/
sell to third parties
(direct marketing), a practice that makes $$$ at "both ends". One only has to read each verification company's privacy policy to figure out who's honest and more importantly
who's not.
One thing that's obvious is many vendors didn't invest much time, effort or research into preparing for this
the easiest of FDA requirements headed their way. Certainly doesn't instill confidence in their ability to pass the more complicated, technically difficult and arduous tasks that lie ahead. Personally, I view this like a crude yardstick to identify which vendors have the business savvy to survive beyond 2018, from where I sit -
that list is pretty short-. Of course the FDA may have already set the bar so high
($$$) none could succeed anyway, only time will tell.