To all of our attendees, big, small, and everything in-between,
As you all know, 2021 was our first big move in bringing the SizeCon convention to the land of the internet, all thanks to the very extraordinary times that we are living in. Our first attempt at this tested a great many theories, all of which have so far proven successful, which is why we have continued to press ahead with future SizeCon [micro] events. All of this would not be possible without this community's tireless support - Thank you!
However, running a convention online presents a very unique set of challenges for an adult-themed convention such as ours. Here in the United States, we need to comply with federal law in order to host the convention (47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003) and ensure that all of our attendees at the event are 18 years of age or older.
If you were attending one of our in-person events, you would also find that our registration desk would be checking your ID. This is done to ensure that prior attendees who have caused issues and broken this community's rules cannot get back into the convention and that all attendees are of legal age. We want to make sure our online events are just as safe for you to be at as our offline events. As you can guess, moving online complicates both of those matters as anyone can make up a fake name or fake their age. This is why I'm coming to everyone today to explain one final new step that will be required before any attendee can attend this year's convention.
SizeCon [micro] has been partnering with **Vouched.id** to provide secure ID verification to our attendees since our first [micro]. As your Technical Director for the convention and the woman responsible for these online systems, it was imperative for me that we find a solution that provides as much anonymity as possible while still verifying someone's identity AND keeping that information as safe as possible -- no easy task. Vouched, luckily, makes all three of these things possible for us. Obviously, many of you may have concerns about your privacy and how that data is being collected. Many of us hide behind masks for a reason, after all. Vouched makes this collection process as safe and as secure as possible. Let’s talk about how this works, both for you, and for us.
**For you, our attendees:**
💚 Before the convention, you will receive a new email inviting you to verify your identity with Vouched.id. This will come to the same email address you used to purchase your ticket.
💚 Clicking the link on any smartphone, desktop, laptop, tablet, etc will redirect you to Vouched, where you will be prompted to take a photo of both your driver’s license and face.
💚 Your connection to Vouched is encrypted and secured by their identification systems.
💚 This information is then automatically sent and compared against your country’s identification systems. Vouched.id handles IDs and Passports from all over the world.
💚 The check only looks to make sure that your name, age, and face are correct. No other information is collected or stored.
💚 If you are on Firefox, you may get an error that says, “Camera not found.” Follow this FAQ to fix it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/camera-permissions
💚 If you didn’t put in your real name when you signed up, that’s fine! Simply go through the process as normal and you will still be cleared. However, be aware that you will see an error that ‘Something went wrong” at the end of the process. Please disregard it, as your signup was still completed!
**For us, the staff:**
💚 We here at SizeCon will not be saving or handling your sensitive data, outside what is provided to us at registration. This was a big one for me. Vouched only reports to us whether you have passed the verification and your name, so we can compare it to the ban list. That’s it.
💚 None of this sensitive data, your ID and your face, are saved. Vouched simply reports the result to us and deletes the data immediately.
💚 The only members of staff who will be interfacing with this system will be myself, our showrunners, and the members of our registration team who already handle attendee information and have done so securely for years.
We know that some of this may make you nervous and we completely understand. However, in order for SizeCon to function as it does, these are the legal requirements on the adult space in the United States. Without this, we would not be able to continue doing online events for you. We also need to make sure that we are providing a safe experience for all of our attendees. SizeCon is, as everyone knows, a **judgement-free and anti-harassment zone.** We don’t want past attendees who have broken these rules to be able to re-enter the convention. Period. Again, we know this is a big change and I’m happy to answer any questions on either discord chat or twitter to discuss any concerns you may have.
Thank you all very much for your continued support and presence. SizeCon isn’t the same size-shifting dimension without you!