How to Verify Parent/Adult identity

Question

This is a long reading, but it is a challenging concept so I have to explain the process.

My company builds apps and sites specialised for kids under 13. According the COPPA legislation every kid under 13 need their parent's permission in order to communicate sensible informations. (Some of our apps have physical prizes and welcome packs that requires mailing addresses )

Every kid under 13 year have to communicate their parent's mail address in order to finish the registration process.

Parents receives a mail about their kids signup on our platform and invited to monitor their kid's activity on our parent portal, where they can see and modify or deny the kid's personal information.

Obviously parents have to identify them self as adults/ guardians by using our ID verification which is a Credit Card verification at the moment.

The issue is the friction is huge as they have to pay bank fee of 0.50 cents (we give this fee to the charities) and also have to communicate their banking information to a new website they just got mail from.

We know there are other verification options like, live id verification but I dont know this will cause more or less friction to the user.

Another option is verify by calling them, which cost us 0.50cents per successful identification and this solution wont scale very well.

What do you think is the best option(s) here ?

Happy to hear all ideas

PS 1 : %50 of parents signed up using mobile phone

PS 2 : adding an infographics that explain the whole flow

Answer 1

This is a fun problem (:

It might be worth offering multiple approaches, or split testing multiple approaches to see which process users tend to prefer. If you've got the resources, it might be worth looking into:

• Upload a picture of your ID (70% mobile signup? Use the phone's camera as part of the submission process)
• Have the child "request" parent authorization, send a text (Teliphony APIs are easy and cheap) to the parent with either:
  • A link to the request form
  • Asking directly for a picture message of the parent's ID
• Give the user the option to donate their 50 cents to a charity of their choice (adds transparency)
• Request a mailer [snail mail form] (use a print-on-demand service)
• Facebook verification using address or linked family accounts?
• One-time bank account integration used to verify user is adult

I think you'll find that, in general, people don't like to hand out bank account or credit card information. Regardless, different users are going to want different things. It would likely be a good idea to build a framework that allows you to test, measure, and learn which implementations work best.

I hope this idea list helps you out!

Answer 2

I would imagine most of the friction is unavoidable due to the legislation.

However there are aspects of the process you will be able to smooth out, Google have a similar process for verifying business listings on their places database, albeit without the impatient child waiting in the wings. You might be able to find out how they refined the process.

As you are printing and dispatching stuff to the whole of the EU, you might benefit from finding print on demand partners in almost each country, who can print in the recipients country and send direct, this should reduce the time delay some what.

You can also add an address lookup or validation tool on the sign up forms, which will help speed up sign ups and ensure that the address data you are using is good, to reduce the risk of them getting lost in the mail.

As far as the payment and post item through the post process goes, the typical shopping cart UX refinements should help slim that process too.

Disclosure I work for a company that offers address validation APIs called Allies, however there are plenty other providers out there and some EU countries that provide address data as open data

Answer 3

If the parent logs in with a commonly used social media, you can check their age. I guess this can be faked, but will be correct for most users. Are you liable in the few cases this is abused?

There is of course always the LSL method, though the effectiveness of this has been weakened with the advent of the Internet. Then maybe you just need to be creative with your questions :)

Answer 4

This isn't a UX problem, it is a business problem. There is no F'ing way I am handing over my info for a 50 cent fee to some unknown website (shit I wouldn't give that to google for this purpose). Worrying about the process of this is like worrying about the tires on a car that has no engine.

If your website is going to have a good UX it is going to have to take a 50 cent hit on every user and figure out how to do the verification without credit cards and bank accounts being mentioned - because just mentioning those... poof I am gone.

Also note that credit card data and bank account data is often available to an intelligent 11 year old. At 11 I would have made an email address for my parent, got their credit card info, they would have been charged and you would have my account verified. The whole process is a sham.

And as far as calling parent... same thing. First I don't want to be called by a website. Second when I was 12 I could easily pass for an adult over the phone. Why couldn't I sneak mom's cell phone for 15 minutes and answer a couple questions? If you are paying a service 50 cents to do this I highly doubt they care about someone faking it. And then again if I am a parent I would never tell you info about me or my kid over the phone.

My advice - seriously - solve the business issue then move on to UX.