72% of Americans Don’t Trust the Companies Verifying Their Age Online [Study]

Age verification laws have spread quickly across the U.S. The first state law requiring adult sites to check users' ages took effect in 2023, and about half the country has followed since, with new age verification laws taking effect every year. A 2026 All About Cookies survey found that 79% of U.S. adults support the idea, but 85% also feel existing age gates are too easy to get around.

As more laws take effect, age checks are getting harder to avoid online, and users are developing different behaviors and approaches around handling these verification prompts. To better understand opinions and experiences relating to online age verification, All About Cookies surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults to see how often they run into these checks, what they do when confronted with prompts to prove how old they are, how much they trust age verification companies with personal data, and more.

Key findings

• More than half of users (56%) who have encountered verification prompts recently said they simply clicked "I'm 18+" with no real check, while only 31% completed actual verification.
• Age verification laws don’t get more people to verify: 31% complete verification in states with and without laws. Instead, people in law states are 7x more likely to give up entirely and 4x more likely to use a VPN.
• 72% of Americans express low levels of trust in the companies and services handling age verification data, including 40% who do not trust them at all.
• Only 15% of Americans are comfortable providing a government ID to verify their age online. Just 8% are willing to share financial records as verification.

How often Americans are asked to verify their age online

Half of U.S. states have some form of age verification law in place, meaning internet users in a large portion of the country are subject to these kinds of laws. According to our survey, more than half the population (61%) has been asked to verify their age while trying to access adult content before.

Among users who have encountered age verification prompts before, 80% say they are asked to verify their age online at least occasionally when trying to access age-gated content. That includes 56% who say they are asked to verify their age most or every time they look up adult content.

That leaves 20% who say they have been asked to verify their age at some point in the past, but rarely or never are asked to do so when accessing restricted content now. This may be due to changes in laws or moving from a state with age verification laws to one without them.

What Americans do when a website asks them to verify their age

While strict age verification laws are becoming more common and states are learning how to best implement and enforce them, it is still easy for users to bypass age requirements online in many places.

When asked what they did the most recent time they were asked to verify their age in order to access restricted content, more than half of respondents (56%) said all they did was click a button saying that they were of age. It's technically non-compliant with most state laws and still the most common experience online. Similarly, 15% simply had to enter a valid birthdate without any further verification.

Less than a third completed the actual verification process. In most states with active age verification laws, users must submit something like a government ID or financial records to a designated vendor to complete that process.

Others chose to work around the check entirely. 11% found a different site without an age gate, and 10% used a VPN to get around the law, though VPN circumvention jumps to 16% among men and drops to 5% among women. Just 11% said they gave up on accessing restricted content because of an age verification requirement.

Does age verification stop people from accessing adult content?

Age verification laws have been implemented in half the states in the country, and most U.S. adults say they have been asked to verify their age to access restricted content before. So just how successful are these laws at preventing users from viewing age-gated content online?

Age verification laws aren't only preventing minors from accessing explicit content the way lawmakers intended it to. They’re also blocking adults. 29% of respondents said an age verification requirement has stopped them from accessing content they wanted to view, including 34% of men compared to just 23% of women.

Are Americans comfortable sharing personal information to verify their age?

Most age verification laws give users several options for verifying their age. In the United States, the most common proof of age options are government-issued identification or financial records that prove the account holder is of age, such as independently opened bank accounts or credit records.

No matter the method of verification, most Americans express a high level of discomfort about giving over personal data to prove their age. The verification method the largest percentage of respondents said they would be comfortable with is submitting a selfie to be analyzed by age-estimation software, and only 18% of people said they would be okay with that, while 69% said they would be uncomfortable doing so. 15% said they would be comfortable using their government-issued ID or taking a picture of their face to verify their age, while less than 10% said they would be fine sending mobile phone, financial, or credit card data to verify their age.

Do Americans trust age verification services with their personal data?

State age verification laws put the responsibility for checking users’ ages on websites, and many sites hand that job off to third-party verification companies. That means users are often asked to share sensitive personal data with a company they’ve never heard of, and many don’t trust them to handle it.

When asked to rate how much they trust age verification companies and services to safely handle their personal data, 40% said they do not trust them at all, the most common answer given. An additional 11% said they had no opinion either way, meaning fewer than half of U.S. adults have any positive trust in these companies when it comes to their data.

Where age verification laws stand, and how to stay protected

Regulators aren't slowing down on age verification requirements. Here's what to know, along with a few practical ways to guard your information.

• Know what's actually happening with age verification laws. More states are introducing age-tracking bills each year, and there have even been recent pushes to introduce age verification on the federal level. Staying up to date on these bills and legislative pushes can help users prepare for an internet where age verification is becoming more common.
• Research top age verification companies. Certain companies and services, such as AgeGO, have gained prominence as age verification requirements have been implemented worldwide. Reading user and expert reviews can help you figure out which companies are most and least trustworthy with personal data.
• A VPN can mask your location from a site's age check, though research shows it's not foolproof. People in states with these laws are still more likely to report getting blocked than those without them. Here's more on bypassing age verification, and where it tends to fall short.

Expert advice

With trust in age verification systems running low and comfort sharing personal data even lower, we wanted to go beyond the numbers and understand what's actually happening under the hood. Here's what our privacy expert had to say.

Vir V. Phoha, Ph.D.

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | Syracuse University

How reliable are today's age verification methods (ID uploads, facial age estimation, etc.) at stopping minors from bypassing them?

Today's systems are reasonably accurate at placing someone within a general age range (often within three to five years), and can usually determine with reasonable confidence whether someone is over 18. But reliability varies significantly across demographics, and these methods remain relatively easy to circumvent, with borderline cases often requiring additional scrutiny.

As more states pass age verification laws, are platforms equipped to verify age accurately without overcollecting personal data?

This varies widely by platform. Large, well-resourced companies generally have the technical capability to estimate age without needing to know someone's actual identity, but there's a persistent tendency toward overcollection industry-wide, sometimes due to systems that gather more data than necessary, whether intentionally or not. The biggest takeaway: age verification doesn't have to mean handing over personal data. Many systems are technically capable of confirming someone is old enough without ever learning who they actually are.

What's something about age verification most people assume, but isn't true?

Most people assume age verification requires handing over a birthdate or identity documents, but that's often not the case. Verification can rely on far less direct signals: a facial image, writing style, or even behavioral patterns like typing rhythm and keystroke timing. Natural language processing can pick up on generational differences in vocabulary and abbreviation, since teens and older adults tend to write in noticeably different styles. These systems aren't foolproof, either: false positives and false negatives disproportionately affect people of color and adults with more youthful features, since these traits can confuse the underlying models. Spoofing is also a real risk, from artificial skin masks fooling facial recognition to generative AI mimicking natural writing or typing patterns.

Methodology

All About Cookies surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults online in September 2026. Questions about how often respondents were asked to verify their age, what they did, and whether they were blocked were asked only to respondents who said they'd been asked to verify their age to access adult content in the past.

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Author Details

Kalleigh Lane

About the Author

Kalleigh Lane is the Managing Editor at All About Cookies, where she helped develop the site's star rating system for product reviews and specializes in testing VPNs, ad blockers, and parental controls on Android and PC. She brings more than five years of experience editing and writing across cybersecurity, tech, and finance, and she has authored and edited over 275 articles for All About Cookies. Before joining AAC, she worked as a journalist and editor at CTV News and the Globe and Mail, and she holds a Master of Arts in English Literature from the University of Toronto.