My Northern California/San Francisco adult ads website, lovings.com, has been requiring a proof of age since our opening in 1996, before the other adult classifieds sites even existed, not to mention required IDs – not just because IDs are already required for content related to adult entertainment (Internet ads are still a gray area), but because I really, really didn’t want kids advertising on it. I also didn’t want the kind of publicity and problems that come with underage advertising “scandals” – for our advertisers as well as for our website. This policy did pay off – we’re pretty much the only local site that didn’t end up in the news at one time or another under headlines such as “Local Underage Prostitution Ring Busted”.

While there’s a good many reasons not to trust *anyone* with your ID, I feel that this creates both a safer space and a less “seedy” visitor market for people who advertise on our website. (We do make sure that any IDs on file are in a safe, encrypted *offline* location, and anyone can – and some did – request a complete deletion of all information we have once they choose not to advertise with us anymore. I do wish that any laws requiring identifying information that can mess up someone’s life would also have clearly written provisions on handling, keeping and destroying such information… they don’t. It’s even worse in porn industry – since the latest batch of laws came out, producers are required to send the IDs of models with photo/video sets… *anyone* can buy those. Scary.)

I’ve advertised on Eros and had those photos stolen. Anywhere that places images/text online can have it stolen. Paying for advertising does not reduce that risk (someone in my city just slightly rewrote my entire Eros ad-text and they’re using it in MY city).

Though age-verification does make a site safer from being shut down and I like that, I also do not recommend that age-verification be implemented on all sites, especially classified sites. Restricting the type of photos that can be used in ads takes care of the need for age verification. The reason I’m so against it is because sex workers do not have rights. Why should we willingly allow MORE regulation of our work when we don’t have the basic legal right to work? Akin to taxation without representation, as far as I’m concerned.