Help

Why didn’t my age check work?

Altimist is for adults only, so we check that you are over 18 before you use rooms you share with others or see age-restricted venues. If the check didn’t confirm you, this page explains what happened and what you can do.

How the check works

When the check runs, your camera opens and takes a photo. Our age-check provider, Yoti, estimates your age from it and tells us one thing: whether you passed.

The photo goes straight to Yoti. It never reaches Altimist. Yoti deletes it once the check is done. We never see it, we never store it, and we are never told your age — only whether you’re over the line.

Why the line is at 21, not 18

Our check passes people it estimates to be 21 or over.

That’s deliberately higher than 18. Estimating someone’s age from a photo isn’t exact, and we’d rather the check err towards turning away an adult than towards letting in someone under 18. The gap between 18 and 21 is that safety margin.

It also means something important: being refused doesn’t mean the check thought you looked under 18. If you’re in your late teens or early twenties, you can be well over 18 and still not clear a line set at 21.

Why an adult can be refused

A few things make the estimate harder, and most of them are about the photo rather than about you:

• Lighting — strong shadows, backlighting, or a dim room
• Anything covering your face — a hat, a hood, sunglasses, a mask
• Framing — your whole face needs to be in shot, facing the camera
• Camera quality — a low-resolution or heavily filtered image

And some of it is simply that people don’t all look their age.

What you can do

You can take the check again — up to three times a day. It’s worth finding good, even light, taking off anything covering your face, and holding the camera at arm’s length and level with your eyes.

The check is automated, but you can ask a person to review it. If you already have an Altimist account, choose ‘Ask a person to review this’ on the age check page. A member of the team looks at it, then either confirms you’re an adult or keeps the result, and tells you in Help. If you’re registering and don’t have an account yet, taking the check again is the only route for now.

If you’re under 18

Altimist isn’t available to you yet. Please come back when you’re older.

What we keep

If a check doesn’t confirm you, we keep a short record that it happened — the method, the outcome and the time — for 30 days. No photo, no age, and nothing that describes your face.