Age Verification Feedback

As of reading a recent post in June regarding age Assurance it has come to my attention that I find many things regarding the situation to be an issue, as well as problematic not just for users, but for the community as a whole. I wish to detail a list of concerns and problems that I see, and that I wish to be addressed in some form. The system as it stands, seems to disregard a somewhat terrible design decision that makes changing, and adjusting avatars that are currently uploaded that are counted as sexually suggestive very tedious, and tiresome. The website, by in large, should have a way to view avatars differently, so they are not in a list, as well as being able to bulk tag avatars. As a user with multiple uploads private or not having to roll through my list and tag everything because I may be punished, makes me feel less compelled to go through the wave of 100s of avatars just to secure my account security due to a fault in design. As I see it, even adding a "Tag all" button on the website, would mean that users with large quantities of either Non Sexually suggestive, or sexually suggestive avatars will be able to adjust and bulk change much of what they have uploaded. I believe this change would benefit however only for this moment, and is sort of a solution that may only be viable now, but could be used in future. Tagging All avatars, while there is no way to tag non sexually suggestive avatars as non sexual, makes me think that there should be something in place to do 'non sexual'. My reasoning for it is simple; You can easily ensure all avatars untagged prior to a certain date (01/01/2025 i think is best,) be marked as Sexual or non sexual (However VRCHAT chooses to see fit). This allows users to go through and mark only a select couple they may need, ensuring the player base is able to use whatever they do or don't tag because there was a helpful system in place. If this however is not a great solution, I think my third point my be quite positive. When a user loads up an avatar they own for the first time after the change, a pop up could appear, allowing users to mark the avatar as Non sexually suggestive, or sexually suggestive. This also can allow future uploads to include this and make avatar uploading easier on the user and the current player base. By allowing us to tag it in game, this prevents the punishment, while also providing VRChat with the security they were asking of it's users. Obviously, this does not include public avatars, which should, by in large, be tagged prior to the change to ensure there is no issue. This does however protect a majority of the player base who may not even know this change is coming and don't have a good way to manage it, as with reasons stated above. As I said too, this change means that those who upload and merely just forgot to make a tag will be notified in game and will be able to fix this issue. This is why I suggested that a 'non sexually suggestive' tag be implemented, so each avatar is properly able to be checked and no longer receive such a pop up. Avatars from beyond the date of the change, should no longer be able to be made public without these tags too, providing more security, so users do not retroactively make private sexual avatars available. Make a clearer, concise list of what is considered sexually suggestive. One of the major issues I found while reading the guidelines, is that the guidelines for what is and isn't Sexually suggestive does have some things that can be left to interpretation. This is a massive issue, because if we, the creators, read such guidelines and deem our content appropriate because as we understood it, it was, and the team for VRChat disagrees, we are punishment due to an error in conveyance. As such, more examples and stricter wording would help regarding this situation. This can also be confusing, due to the idea that something that is 'sexually suggestive' is agreed to be, by all people, and all sexual orientations. Better guidelines will help everyone, and again, will improve future content creation for all users. I hope that these ideas could be implemented, even if it's just one of them, as they each make an impactful difference to the community and creators as a whole. I hope this is considered as things roll out.

To put this plain and simple to start: The idea of verifying one's age to gain access to more secure and moderated groups and instances sounds like a good idea at first. However, your current method of age verification (Persona, and frankly any 3rd-party ID Verification service) is, and has already proven to be, an incredible risk to everyone's data privacy and cybersecurity. (Now onto the lengthy part) Persona has been recorded gathering more information other than Age such as: name, address, gender, marital status, and similar demographic details, Social Security Numbers, IP address, device type, your device’s operating system, browser, cookie and device identifiers, and other software including type, version, language, settings, and configuration, geolocation data such as city, state, and country, etc. Persona also has ties to the government data analytics company Palantir. Persona has also been caught building profiles on users and sharing said profiles with the US government and government organizations such as ICE, even having a flagging system to flag users that seemed suspicious. It was also discovered that 269 different checks were used for verification, including things like phone carrier queries and death record matching, and with their privacy policy hiding these checks under vague terms like "public government documents". So this all means that even though Persona says that all data is deleted within the first 3 days (or in some cases, up to 3 years), that data has already been passed off to third-party partners and the US government and does not get deleted. To further prove my point, Other age verification services have had multiple mass breaches of personal information, such as pictures of IDs, Biometric Face Scan data, and more. For example: Infutor, which had a massive data breach where 676,798,866 unique American citizens (including deceased persons) had their data exposed, including full names, date of birth, addresses, cities, state, ZIP codes, phone numbers, and social security numbers. IDMerit also had about 1 billion personal records leaked throughout the world. I am completely unwilling to put my personal data and cybersecurity at risk for a little logo that tells others that I'm over 18. But I believe that there are possible, safer alternatives for age verification My first thought for alternatives is, of course, manual age verification checks performed by VRChat's safety team. This is obviously never going to happen because this would take forever, hiring enough staff members to review all of these age verification requests would be too expensive, and this also comes with security risks. So my next Idea is credit card-based age verification. This is, in my opinion, the best of both worlds. The majority of countries across the world require you to be at least 18 years of age to get a credit card, and currently, you need to have an active VRC+ membership to age-verify. There could very well be a system where if the user pays for a VRC+ membership using a credit card, then they become automatically eligible for the age-verified status. This is personally how I would like to verify my age. I don't currently have a credit card, but I am willing to wait until both I have a credit card and until you get a system like this put in place. But until that day comes, I will never age-verify using Persona or any other ID Verification service. I hope you take everything that I have said into serious consideration moving forward.

I feel like if your details are wrong you should be able to change it because some of us have siblings who a long time ago used the vr and now we are stuck with their age verification when we are older so we can’t go to older age gated worlds

Dear VRChat Team, I am writing to express my strong desire to support and participate in VRChat’s mature, age-gated communities, while urging the team to implement alternative age assurance methods that do not rely on Persona. While I completely understand and support VRChat's need to comply with global regulations and protect the platform, many dedicated users—including myself—have deep-seated privacy concerns regarding Persona. Given their past data handling controversies, public code exposures, and the widespread community pushback that led platforms like Discord to cut ties with them, I am entirely uncomfortable providing them with my government ID or biometric camera data. Many adult players want to verify their age but feel forced to choose between their digital privacy and accessing 18+ spaces. I would love to see VRChat introduce less invasive verification alternatives, such as: Privacy-first vendors: Partnering with alternative, strictly audited age-estimation providers like Yoti that process scans entirely on-device and instantly destroy pixel data. Non-biometric verification: Implementing alternative checks, such as temporary credit card authorizations or mobile carrier verification, which prove adulthood without requiring facial tracking. VRChat has always thrived because of its community's trust. Offering a choice in how we verify our identity would allow privacy-conscious adults to safely enjoy the full VRChat experience without compromising their personal data. Thank you for your time, your hard work on platform safety, and for listening to community feedback. Sincerely, Smarseille

I've been an active user for 5+ years, primarily in the rave scene. over the past while, more and more sfw venues I've attended for years have adopted age verification, which I won't use because I'm not willing to hand over that kind of personal information for a social platform recently my favorite event age-gated itself right before my birthday, which was the last straw for me I don't want to leave, but I'm currently making plans to move to another platform. I hope there's an alternative path being considered that doesn't require giving up my privacy because I'd like a reason to stay thanks for reading

After confirming the identity, everything was highlighted in the profile and confirmed:You have been successfully verified.But the 18+ checkmark did not appear in the game, but in the application profile on the phone and on the Hidden website.I want to ask who has the same problem? (A vr chat ticket has been created for support for a long time, they haven't responded yet, although it's been 3 days, I just want to ask if someone knows what's going on)

as world creator I have to face maaaaany paranoic fear from the people commissioning worlds and I mean public institutions that want to be "sure" that in their space won't be around bad guys. In italy roblox is seen very badly by cultural associations that are planning to have a virtual world because was sued by US states for very horrible situations. Anyhow I personally consider VRCHAT a Fellini movie where you can walk inside, so weirdness and even nastyness is inevitable. I mean give a look on Jinxx is filled of s3xual content to be bought and twitch in the weekend is a movierama from Pompei frescos.

When your Uploaded avatars are filtered by Content Gating, these become unlisted from the "Uploaded" tab, the VRChat Home avatars list, and the Content Manager in the VRChat Avatars SDK. This may incorrectly incentivize creators to remove Content Warnings from avatars they've uploaded themself for usability reasons, to switch into those avatars more easily - unless you are Verified 18+ and can disable Gating. The issue comes from stifling creators who are not Verified 18+ (but may be older than 18 years old), have uploaded some of their avatars with "Sexually Suggestive" content warnings, and want to switch into those "Sexually Suggestive" avatars themselves. Functionally switching into these filtered self-uploaded/private avatars is plausible, but these avatars may become forcefully unlisted by Content Gating (per VRChat's blog post) and are only accessible directly by a known URL/avatar ID, from Recently Used, or from Favorite Avatars. This hurts discoverability and may incentivize these stifling creators to remove Content Warnings in order to switch into these avatars in app without obstacles, with the intent to avoid going through an Age Assurance process and the plausible associated costs incurred to the creator (e.g. a month of VRC+ to become age assured). Additional info: https://ask.vrchat.com/t/developer-update-25-june-2026/48618/35 https://hello.vrchat.com/blog/june-2026-safety-update Note: I'm Verified 18+ btw.

There is no such thing as a perfectly secure, vulnerability-free personal information management service that can accommodate the unique approaches of every nation. That’s just a fact. Yet, we can't simply do nothing—doing so would just invite lawsuits—so the reality is that we have no choice but to use "Persona." Switching to another company would carry its own risks; there’s really no way around it. If I had to point a finger, the fault lies with a society that wants to foist responsibility for individual criminal acts onto the platform. There is simply no realistic way for VRChat to solve this problem perfectly. It is just a place where a multitude of people exist, much like the real world. While it might be possible to moderate rules on an instance-by-instance basis, having a single company take responsibility for managing the entire world is impossible unless they monitor absolutely everything. That is a role for the police. Or, to go any further, VRChat would have to become something akin to the police or a state authority. We’ve likely reached the limit of what’s possible. We just have to wait for society to catch up to us—we who have effectively created a global state ahead of the curve. Then again, perhaps the right answer is to completely fragment the platform along national lines.