Hi Folks, Hope this is useful info for you all.  About a week ago I tried logging on to my SA account as usual and got this very daunting message:

You have committed more violations of our Terms of Service. Your account was flagged for the following reasons:

    Potentially looking for underage members
    We recently noticed that you have been in contact with someone who disclosed themselves to be under the age of 18. Continuing to inappropriately engage with persons who have disclosed themselves to be under the age of 18 is against our terms of use no matter what the age of consent is in your particular area. Please contact the Customer Support Team to see if your account is eligible for restoration.

You have committed this violation too many times, and as a result, your account has been permanently banned from Seeking.com. Please read our FAQs for more information:  
https://www.seeking.com/faq
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Of course I have never searched for underage members. But about a month ago I was in conversation with a SB who revealed she was not 18 and was in fact just 16!  In retrospect I should have immediately told her to fuck off and reported her to SA.  But that's not my style.  Instead I tried to be supportive and encouraging, but told her we lived too far apart and let the conversation fizzle out. I thought no harm, no foul.  Apparently SA thought differently.

The good news is that I did explain this to SA, I did read every word of their Terms of Use and I did apologize and promise to never knowingly interact with anyone under 18 again and to report them should I discover they are under 18.  And they reinstated my profile a few days later.  Phew!

I actually found their Terms of Use to be a carefully written interesting document.  If you haven't read it yourself, or not recently, I recommend it.  One worthy aspect is after each section written in legalese/lawyerese, there's a restatement in plain English, with phrases like "don't be a jerk" that anyone can understand.  And obviously, if you discover any SB under 18 report her right away.

This episode does raise the question of how they found out about the unacceptable messages. Surely they don't read all the messages posted on SA.  I suppose an algorithm searching for offensive terms could be used.  But my wife had a more obvious answer.  The 16yo girl probably was sending messages to several SDs one of whom did report her to SA and then they searched through her messages to see who else she'd been talking to.  Bottom line is be careful what you talk about on the SA message board and anything which could conceivably be construed as violating their terms of service should be discussed off site.

Glad you are okay. Thanks for the warning

A high percentage of underage girls on the Internet are cops.

A guy who is 70 telling a girl of sixteen that the only reason he isn't interested in her sexually  is because "they live too far away" is sending entirely the wrong message. Engaging with a "child" on the internet PERIOD where even the mere possibility of sex could be inferred is a huge no no. This is not anything that should need to to be said, TER won't even allow baby pictures on the site they take the subject so seriously, as they should.

 
At the very least you should have told her "It's highly inappropriate for you to be her, I don't make the laws, but your very presence here has the potential to land some poor guy in prison. For your own good, please leave this site until you are of age"

 
Ok, you already know how badly you fucked up, (and boy did you fuck up) as to your question about HOW they knew. I have a rule on all sites such as SA AND TER, don't say anything "privately" using their messaging system that you wouldn't want to say directly to Admin. No, they don't have the manpower to monitor every message, and most likely your wife is correct, but there are also certain keywords that will flag additional attention, kind of like claiming a "home office deduction" won't always trigger an audit, but it certainly increases your odds of one.  

 
If you'd like to put this to the test, you can do so right here on TER. Try making a post with "child porn" in the subject line and see just how many times it will get flagged for "random moderation"

I can't argue with you and have learned my lesson for sure.  

I wish they would confine their efforts to catching child predators and women actually being trafficked against their will rather than spending all their time and resources trying to catch and imprison "consenting adults" ostensibly for "their own good". Kind of like putting pot smokers in prison because someone decided that pot is "bad for you"  

 
What I don't believe in is the practice of finding a 17 year old who looks 25 in order to "entrap" guys who aren't pedophiles at all, and yes I will fully  concede there is a lot of that going on on the internet as well, just like they do to try to catch bartenders serving underage customers in a similar manner.

 
Personally, I think that 18 is a very arbitrary number, I know women who are emotional children at 20 and others who are mother's of three at age 18 and who are every bit as adult as women twice their age by necessity.  I was actually seeing a chica in Costa Rica many years back who was 19 when I met her, I didn't ask her how old her kid was at the time. I ran into her again a few years ago when she was 26 and she told me her son was 13, I can only imagine if I had met her when she was 17, can you even imagine being charged with statutory rape for having sex with a woman who was the mother to a four year old??? lol

To date I have not had any POT SB tell me (or had me find out otherwise) that they are underage. I guess it would be kind of a shocker, I can only imagine having my life flash before my eyes with the realization that I was "that close" to doing something that could land me in prison. lol

 
and yes, it does look like you did indeed dodge a bullet. Just out of curiosity, how did the subject of her being underage come up? Did you ask her an age related question, or did she just volunteer it out of the blue in a "I guess I should tell you something" kind of way?

Just about any age is going to be arbitrary.  It is picked for practical reasons.  I'd say the liberals at colleges who are now banning hand clapping and forcing "jazz hands" instead will never actually become adults.

I Had a great conversation with a plaintiff's attorney once over lunch. It was a corporate lawyer so a very different context but his simple advice has stayed with me for decades...
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Never say (or write!) anything that you wouldn't mind repeating in court, on 60 Minutes or in front of your mother.  
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Sweetman, my friend, my advice is print out that line and glue it to the top of your monitor.  

… to meet Chris Hansen!  
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"Who are you?"  
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"Just have a seat right here..."  
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Dodged a bullet indeed!  
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And good advice to re-read the TOS! My afternoon homework, after I meet this cute 20 year old Pinay for coffee this afternoon.  

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Life is Good
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-The Cat

Here's another tidbit I picked up:

Never say anything in a public rest room, and that goes double for rest rooms in a courthouse.

Sometimes, simply tapping your toe is enough.  Just ask Larry Craig. lol

I was approached by two minors ...shut both down immediately, with a clear " I have no interest in minors in any way whatsoever!" I won't even entertain the notion of an 18 or 19 year old. And even if I ever would...I.D. would be an absolute must! A troubled youth can bring you more trouble than you could ever want. If that notion crept in to my mind for even a second...I believe I would castrate myself.

she volunteered it.  As I recall she said she wasn't actually 18 yet.  When I asked her how old she was she said 16.

I agree that troubled youth is trouble, no question there. But I have met some truly amazing 18 and 19 year olds who had their heads on straight and were enjoying life in a remarkably adult fashion.  Checking ID is standard procedure for me now  Previously I only did it occasionally.

LE can and does read social media, and I am sure they have a presence on all the SB sites, not to mention right here on TER.  

 
Now I will confess to being rather cavalier about talking right out in the open about seeing hookers,  and not just under my TER handle, but to be honest, I am hardly worried about LE knocking at my door to charge me with solicitation someday because of things I have said on the internent. OTOH, anyone who is doing anything that could result in felony charges, and that includes "promotion of prostitution" which is quite different than simply relating your own experiences in an anecdotal kind of way, it also applies to anything to do with an underage person among a thousand other things that are illegal,  I can't imagine putting ANYTHING of such a nature in writing period, much less doing so over the internet which we all know is FOREVER.

True to an extent, but there are also teen moms who are totally lacking in maturity and responsibility, too.  Having a kid, doesn't automatically make you "mature.
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Traci Lords got pregnant at 13 and had an abortion. She got fake ID at 15 that said she was 22 and she was able to get work in adult entertainment, including porn. It's not that the IDs were good fakes, but that Traci was absolutely credible as a sexually mature 22 yo adult. She became one of the most sought after and highly paid porn actresses until she was outed around the time of her 18th birthday.
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One opinion (or question) expressed in some editorial or op-ed pieces at the time asked which was worse: a 17 yo TL portraying a mature 24-25 yo adult role in porn or a 24 yo dressed up as a school girl (that is, a YOUNG school girl, not an 18+ college school girl)?  As a viewer, which is worse? A golden-age scripted porn scene of adults in dramatic or comedic situations or a porn scene that tries to portray illegal (sub-18) sex? The answer today is not that one or the other but should be banned or avoided but BOTH should be avoided: a sub-18 actor in porn is illegal; having legal actors portraying sub-18 characters plays to the desires of pedophiles and is no longer common or popular in mainstream porn.  
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Some athletes and some rapper / musician guy have gotten into trouble for meeting up with sub-18s. There is at least one famous athlete who insisted on taking a photo of his female "guests" with ID before anything happened as insurance against any allegations of non-consensual or underage activities.  
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Oh ... just steer clear of the teens and, if in doubt, ask for ID.

I typically don’t entertain anyone under 24 but have been tempted with some persistent SA SB’s that are 18-23.  I have one 20 yo that can carry on an intelligent text conversation (and has a day job) that is tempting me to meet her. I’ve already asked her to confirm that she is 20 via text but I still get nervous.  She seems to be a 20 yo that knows what she wants.
So do any of you have a lower age limit?

You are free to steer clear of the sub 21 crowd, but I have been seeing women from 18-30+ for decades and I haven't found any more or less drama based on age. I think part of that is because I simply won't stand for it no matter how young or old a woman is.  

 
It's hardly rocket science, at the first sign of BSC coming from a woman I set her straight, if she persists I kick her to the curb. Easy peasy. I don't know why so many of you make this so complicated. Of course in your case, I have found over our many conversations you seem to "prefer" complicated. lol