Veamcast

Why we ask for your birth month and year

Short version: you have to be at least 13 to have a Veamcast account, and asking is the only way we can know. That is in our Terms of Service, and it is what the children's privacy rules we follow require (COPPA in the United States). It is a legal check, not a marketing question.

What we ask for

Two things: the month and the year you were born. That is all.

We do not ask for the day. We do not need it to work out whether you are 13, so we do not ask for it.

The same answer settles two different questions

There are two age lines on Veamcast, and your birth month and year are what we work both of them out from. We do not ask twice.

• 13 and over to have an account. Watching, posting, commenting, starting a channel: the whole of Veamcast as a place to put things and find things.
• 18 and over to run ads or take money. Creating or editing an ad campaign, attaching one to a channel or a veam, and joining a tier that pays out. These are commercial arrangements, and an account holder has to be an adult to enter one.

So a 15 year old gets an account and a channel and is not asked for anything else. The second line sits at the campaign editor: it opens and the work can be typed, and the refusal arrives when they press Save, in those words. Ad campaigns and monetized channels are available to account holders 18 and over.

The 18 check is made on our servers from the birthday on file, not in the page, so it is the same answer whichever app you are using. If we have no birthday on file for your account yet, there is nothing to check and the answer is no until you add one: open Your Personal Data on your account view and it takes a moment.

Why not just a checkbox?

A box that says "I am 13 or over" is the obvious thing to use, and it is the one thing we are not supposed to use. Three reasons.

• A checkbox tells you the answer we want. Anyone who wants in can see exactly which box to tick, including a ten year old. The privacy rules ask for an age question that does not point at the right answer. A month and a year point at nothing.
• A checkbox is not an age. It is you agreeing with a sentence we wrote. If it got ticked by mistake there is nothing to look at later and nothing to correct. A month and a year are a real answer: we can show you what is on file, and you can put it right if it is wrong.
• It is still the least we can ask. A full date of birth would be more than the question needs. A checkbox would be too little to mean anything. Month and year is the smallest answer that gives a real age.

We cannot stop someone typing a year that is not theirs, and no sign-up form anywhere can. What we can do is ask the question plainly instead of pointing at the answer that gets you through.

Where you will see the question

• The web player asks once, on the sign-in form, before the verification email goes out. Signing in is also how a web account gets created, so this is the gate in front of account creation.
• The Windows app asks once per installation, on the first screen of the startup wizard, before any of the ways of signing in.
• The phone and tablet app asks before sign-in, above all of the sign-in buttons.
• The early adopter form asks on the join form itself. Joining creates the account, so the question belongs there and not on a sign-in days later.

Where the answer is kept

First on the device you answered on: in your browser's own storage in the web player, in a file on your machine in the Windows app, and on the device in the phone app. It is kept per device rather than per person, which is why each device asks you once.

The early adopter form is the one exception. It keeps nothing on your device. The month and the year are saved with the record of the agreement you gave on that form, next to the date you joined, and nowhere else.

Once an account exists, the month and the year also go into a private record of your own on our side, so we can show you what is on file and fix it if it is wrong. They are only written there when that record is empty, so an answer you gave for yourself is never overwritten by a device you happen to sign in on.

Your account record itself holds no birth date, and no separate "we checked" flag either. The month and the year live in the private record above, and in the browser or the app you answered on. Nothing else about the question is stored against your account.

If the answer is under 13

No account is created, and we do not ask again on that device. That last part is on purpose, and it is what regulators expect: someone who has told us they are under 13 should not be sent back to the form to try a different answer.

That answer stays on the device, in the same place as an answer that passed. It is not saved against a name or an email address, because we would rather not keep a list of the people we have turned away. It is an age screen, not a register.

On the early adopter form nothing at all is kept: no account, no application, no record of the address, and nothing on the device either. The answer is refused and that is the end of it.

We are building a way for a parent or guardian to ask for an account instead. Until that is finished the screen says so: a request you type there is noted on the device and no email goes out yet. If a real birth date was mistyped, write to support@veamcast.com and we can talk you through clearing the answer on that device.

About the pictures

Once the question is answered, some of our apps show artwork based on the same month and year: a star sign, a Chinese zodiac animal, a life stage. That is a second use of an answer we already had to take, and it is not why we ask. It is worked out from the date itself and sits in the same private record. Narrowing it down, or ignoring it, is up to you, and the two optional sliders next to it record nothing at all unless you move them.

Changing or removing it

In the web player, open Your Personal Data on your account view to see what is on file and correct it. Clearing your Veamcast data in that panel clears the optional parts; the age answer itself is kept on purpose, because it is the record that we asked. To have it removed altogether, write to support@veamcast.com.

Questions about any of this are welcome at contact@veamcast.com.