Identity verification for dating and social platforms

What dating and social platforms ask of identity checks

On a dating or social service the person on the profile is the product, and two things go wrong at the edges. The first is age: a user who says they are an adult and is not. The second is identity: a profile that borrows a stranger's photographs, or a person who was removed and comes back under a new name. The checks must not ask for more data than the question needs, because users are wary of handing over a passport to a dating app.

• Establish the age from a document, not from a typed date.
• Give a user who passes a verified profile, shown by your product.
• Recognise a removed user who returns.
• Spot generated and swapped faces in the verification selfie.
• Pass the result on without personal data.

The flow

1. Entry point. Your app or site opens the web widget for a session, as part of sign-up or when a user asks for a verified badge. A user who starts on a desktop can finish on a phone with a QR code.
2. Document and age. The user photographs an identity document. The date of birth is compared with the age window in your scenario, which is configurable from 16 to 100.
3. Selfie and active liveness. The selfie is matched to the document portrait, and the user moves the face through two ovals. Deepfake and face-swap detection runs inside the selfie and liveness steps.
4. Ban evasion. Repeat-user search looks for the same face among earlier verified users, and your own person lists and blocklists are checked in the same flow.
5. Result without personal data. The webhook tells your system the session is complete, and it has an option that does not send personal data.
6. Badge. Your product shows the verified badge when the result meets your rule.

Modules used

• Age verification: the date of birth on the document against a configurable window of 16 to 100.
• Document verification, face verification and liveness, including deepfake and face-swap detection.
• Repeat-user search and blocklists, described on the face verification page. A returning user is compared with a stored reference face.
• Webhooks, including the option that does not send personal data.
• Web SDK and widget in 29 interface languages.

Regulatory frame

Two primary texts, one from the European Union and one from the United Kingdom, both about children on online services. Each states who it applies to, and the statements below keep those limits.

• Under Article 19 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, the section on additional provisions for providers of online platforms, with the exception of Article 24(3), does not apply to providers of online platforms that qualify as micro or small enterprises as defined in Recommendation 2003/361/EC, or that previously qualified for that status during the 12 months following their loss of it, except when they are very large online platforms; it does apply to designated very large online platforms irrespective of whether they qualify as micro or small enterprises.
• Within that scope, Article 28(1) requires providers of online platforms accessible to minors to put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security of minors on their service.
• Article 28(3) adds that compliance with that Article does not oblige providers to process additional personal data in order to assess whether the recipient of the service is a minor.
• Section 12(1) of the Online Safety Act 2023, which extends to the United Kingdom, sets out duties to protect children's online safety that apply in relation to regulated user-to-user services that are likely to be accessed by children.
• Section 12(4) provides that the duty in section 12(3)(a) requires a provider to use age verification or age estimation, or both, to prevent children of any age from encountering primary priority content that is harmful to children which the provider identifies on the service.
• Under section 12(5), that requirement applies to a particular kind of primary priority content in every case except where a term of service indicates that the presence of that kind of content is prohibited on the service and that policy applies in relation to all users of the service.
• Section 12(6) adds that, if a provider is required by subsection (4) to use age verification or age estimation, it must be of such a kind, and used in such a way, that it is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a particular user is a child.
• Under section 230(2) and (4), age verification means any measure designed to verify the exact age of users, and a measure that only asks a user to self-declare their age is not age verification or age estimation.

This block describes the texts, not our service. For information; not legal advice.

Sources

• Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act), Official Journal text, fetched 27 October 2026.
• Online Safety Act 2023, section 12, legislation.gov.uk, fetched 27 October 2026.
• Online Safety Act 2023, section 230, legislation.gov.uk, fetched 27 October 2026.

Next

Try the interactive tour, read the age verification use case or talk to us.