May 2022
Since 1st April 2022, it has been a legal requirement in the UK for online retailers to check that customers are over 18, before shipping knives or bladed products to them. This is in addition to requiring age ID to be physically shown at time of delivery.
A number of changes have been brought in to the Offensive Weapons Act 2019.
TOG has partnered with VerifyMyAge to check customers’ ages immediately after the checkout process on our website.
According to them,
“VerifyMyAge works with a comprehensive range of technology partners to create an age assurance ecosystem of data, deep tech and artificial intelligence partners, resulting in the most comprehensive and effective age verification and estimation solution available.”
92% of customers will not even realise their age is being checked. Their name and address is looked up in a number of UK-wide databases including the electoral register, Experian and open banking data. If they can be verified as being 18 or over, the order is shipped as normal.
Customers that have passed age verification before won’t have to pass it again.
For the 8% that cannot be checked in ‘stealth mode’, there are 3 other ways we can check they are 18:
• Biometric face analysis and estimation of age by artificial intelligence.
• Scan or upload of passport or driving license
• Credit card details
We have found that some customers are understandably not comfortable entering credit card details or uploading copies of their ID. If this is you, please be assured that the information you provide is used for the sole purpose of verifying your age. All data is encrypted at rest and in-transit using a combination of 256-bit encryption and hashing algorithms. This means that VerifyMyAge does not store personal data, only an anonymised 'hash' of data, with an associated tag confirming that the user is over 18. Read more detail here.
If you would still rather not provide this data and the biometric age estimation is not working your laptop or desktop computer, please try using a mobile phone instead - the cameras on phones tend to work much more reliably.
If you are not able to verify you age immediately after your order has been placed on our website, you will receive up to three emails from VerifyMyAge allowing you to verify your age at your own pace and on a different device. If you have not received such an email, please check your junk mail folder.
We really hope our age Verification will cause minimal disruption to your buying experience. If you do have any issues, please email customerservices@togknives.com or call us on 0044 (0)117 276 0273.
