iOS 26.4 age verification without credit card or plastic ID

lobsterghost1 wrote:

That's all good and well. But no matter how much you argue what OFCOM this or that is or isn't, isn't helping anyone who can't verify their age. This might be a great Social Media discussion. But this isn't a Social Media site. This is a technical support forum for users to ask how to do something on their iPhone. It simply makes no difference what OFCOM or the UK Government or Apple does here. None of those entities are here, nor will any of those entities comment here. I can imagine if you go to Reddit or Quora, you may find loads of people who will be happy to debate this with you. But this forum isn't the place to debate policies, regulations or laws no one here can change or has any control over.

Maybe I can explain this again in a way you can understand.

The original poster's issue is that he can't complete age verification on his UK iPhone because he does not have any of the three forms of identification Apple chose to implement in their age verification approach.

He was given the advice to call Apple support, which is good because at this time that is his only solution. Call Apple and complain and hope Apple changes the approach they have implemented. (Neglecting the option of obtaining one of the three required ID methods Apple has decided to accept.)

That's it, that's his only option. It is also the only option of the large number of us that have exactly the same issue. That is the correct tech support answer at this time. Which, by the way, he apparently did along with a large number of other people.

He then received incorrect advice to complain to the UK Government (which would be OFCOM in this case) about the problem because OFCOM is responsible because OFCOM picked the acceptable identification documents that Apple implemented. There are a large number of comments like that in this thread.

That advice was wrong.

OFCOM did not pick the acceptable documents or even method of age verification that Apple implemented. OFCOM specified the rules and regulations that must be followed and then they provided guidance to developers and companies as to possible methods of satisfying those rules and regulations. As far as I can find they never said, Apple you must implement age verification by examining Driving Licenses, or Credit Cards, or any other specific for of ID. OFCOM provided a non-extensive list of methods they thought could be acceptable and Apple chose three and created a fourth that they implemented.

So my post explained this and provided the relevant information from OFCOM for several reasons: So the original poster would understand why to call Apple as opposed to OFCOM or his MP or someone else, so that the original poster might have some additional information to relay to Apple with his complaint so they might take some note and escalate the issue, and because when I originally simply said no this is really an Apple issue and not an OFCOM issue without any backing to that statement my post was removed by a moderator.

So, no, I am trying to provide some actual peer-to-peer tech support to the original poster.

I am sorry if my posts aren't clear enough for you to see that. I don't know your motivation for attacking my post. Possibly you think actually explaining the root cause of an issue is somehow irrelevant to someone asking for assistance. If that is how you feel, I disagree with you, particularly when there is currently no actual solution to their problem other than call and complain. Personally I wish there was a solution, a simple do this, do this, then do that. I would do it myself. But unfortunately there doesn't seem to be.