2008 June « Honestly Speaking

Scandalous cases of identity fraud on internet dating sites are good business for Honesty Online. Here are a couple of recent cases:

A man posed as a 10-year NBA veteran and Seattle Supersonics front-office employee to impress women.
A man allegedly posed as a wealthy, Grammy-nominated music mogul, scamming multiple victims out of a combined $102,000.

When I see stories like these, I like to play a game of “Would we have given the cad a credential?” This boils down to two questions: First, did he (usually it’s a “he”) misrepresent his basic real-life identity? The NBA poseur, using somebody else’s name, clearly fails this test and wouldn’t have rated even a Verification credential from Honesty Online.

In the second case, the accused used his ex-wife’s current, and his former, real-life address in his alleged dealings with the scam-ees. No mention is made of his using a fake name or age. So, it’s difficult to say whether he would have scored a Verification (which does not include a check into one’s familiarity with Quincy Jones or Michael Jackson). We haven’t knowingly tested the service on people described as homeless — maybe that would have tripped him up. The second question is the money shot: Does he have a criminal or sex-offender background? Not surprisingly, in this case the schemer has prior convictions for theft and indecent exposure. No Certification for this creep.

As much as we like to make hay out of infamous internet identity scandals, Honesty Online’s core value proposition isn’t defending against the sleaziest of the sleazy (although that’s a useful and sale-able side-benefit). It’s enabling Joe-online-user to reassure others that his online persona matches his real-life identity. It’s promoting a community of trust within our partner sites where people seeking a relationship with others — whether that relationship is personal or professional — can hone in on those with nothing to hide.

Honesty Online was recently the subject of a flattering post on Web2.Oh…really?. A comment on this post highlighted the degree of confusion around online identity, identity verification, and (dare I say it) Identity 2.0. By way of introduction I thought it would be helpful to put what we do, which is identity verification, in the context of these identity buzzwords.

In many circles, having and using an online identity refers to the traditional concepts of authentication (you log into a social networking site, say) and authorization (the site gives you access to your account but not other users’). Untold software developer-millenia have gone into developing systems to manage identity directories, allow single sign-on to multiple systems through one log-in, and control access to online resources such as your company’s HR forms or your personal financial information.

Until recently, online identity-management schemes concerned themselves with authentication and authorization within a single organization or system. If you were lucky, you might be a user of federated systems which, through a formal arrangement, would share your identity to enable single sign-on to each system without having to log-in each time. But the Internet does not have a universal identity infrastructure — it consists of, as Kim Cameron in his “Laws of Identity” described, “a patchwork of identity one-offs.”

In 2005, Dick Hardt gave a now-famous presentation in which he defined Identity 2.0 as a universal identity-management system that allows a user to use her identity information throughout the Internet. Identity 2.0 describes a user-centric system, where the user controls what identity credentials (name? age? location? etc.) are shared with each web site, and where identity credentials can be provided on behalf of a user by any trusted identity service — or a combination of services.

Identity management systems, whether traditional or 2.0, deal with digital identity — your presence as a unique online entity. Honesty Online verifies a user’s natural identity — who you are, and what your background is, in real life. Digital and natural identity are not exclusive. Since a digital identity boils down to an entity (a user, say) with a bunch of credentials, and natural identity is a particular set of credentials, it is possible to include natural identity as a subset of your digital identity.

Honesty Online is not trying to solve digital identity problems. We are not trying to implement Identity 2.0. But when Identity 2.0 becomes reality, we fully intend to become an Identity 2.0-compatible credential provider for natural identity — whatever technology achieves the Identity 2.0 vision of universal, user-centric digital identity. In the meantime, out of the many identity issues out there, Honesty Online solves an important one, today — allowing a user to get her real-life identity and background verified for the benefit of others online.

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