Age policy

Pompara is available to people aged 18 or older — or the local age of majority, if higher. Anyone under that age must not create an account, use the product, or attempt to verify on behalf of an older person.

Pompara's characters discuss adult themes drawn from the historical record of Pompeii — sex work, slavery, gendered violence, the things first-century Romans wrote on bathhouse walls. The themes are handled with care, but they are not appropriate for minors.

Several jurisdictions (UK under the Online Safety Act's HEAA rules, Texas under HB 1181, Louisiana under Act 440, and others) require us to confirm you are 18+ before granting access.

We use a layered waterfall, in roughly increasing friction order. You only progress to the next step if the previous one can't verify you.

1. Mobile network age check. Your mobile carrier confirms your age band without revealing your number to us. Takes about 30 seconds. Most successful for mobile users.
2. Open banking age check. Your bank confirms you are 18+ via a one-redirect OAuth flow. UK only at launch.
3. Credit card check (3DS SCA). A small, immediately-reversed verification charge on a credit card that requires you to be 18+ to hold.
4. Face age estimation. A selfie processed by Yoti. Used as fallback when the prior methods don't apply. Takes about 20 seconds.
5. Document + selfie. A government-ID scan plus a liveness selfie. Slowest method, used only when nothing else works.

When you verify, we store only the following on your account:

• A boolean: verified: true.
• The method that succeeded (e.g. "MNO", "Yoti").
• A timestamp.
• The verification provider's opaque reference ID, in case we ever need to ask them to re-confirm.

• Your date of birth. We never receive it from the providers; we don't need it.
• Your selfie or document scan. Yoti and OneID do not retain these either.
• Biometric templates. Face-age estimation runs as a one-shot inference and discards the input.

This non-retention posture is required by Texas HB 1181 and Louisiana Act 440, and we apply it globally.

If none of the methods succeed, you can't access chat features. You can still browse the marketing pages and the character chooser.

If you believe a verification failed in error, email hello@pompara.com and we'll review.

All Pompara characters are rated "Mature 18+". There is no "safe" sub-mode or filtered tier. If you are not comfortable with adult themes handled candidly and in period, this is not the product for you.

Email us at hello@pompara.com with whatever evidence you have. We will investigate within 72 hours and, if confirmed, terminate the account and purge associated data.