Fighting Identity Theft with TrustedID

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Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch gets a lot of deserved heat for his glowing review of TrustedID.

I’ve been following the ID verification, identity management, background check market

for quite some time, advising companies like Trufina and talking to the providers of the SSO (single Sign On) frameworks that will use these types of services. There is definitely a need for enhanced security on the the internet but this kind of rushed reporting is what gives bloggers a bad name. Mike’s faux pas aside, the background on ID theft is sobering.

Ten million people per year fall victim to identity thieves - and sometimes it takes years to track down what’s happened, shut down fake credit accounts in victims’ names and restore their credit and name to good standing. Shredding mail and other personal documents is not enough to protect yourself, either. Last year, over 50 million consumer data records were lost by corporations. The FTC estimates that identity theft costs our economy about $50 billion per year. This is where TrustedID comes in. First, they are fighting the federal legislation and trying to expand state level consumer protection laws. And second their new product, IDFreeze, will help consumers protect their credit.

TrustedID could be an interesting partner for a dating site in conjunction with dating sites under the guise of providing tools and services to online daters and showing they care about their safety and security. Judging by how long it’s taken background checks and ID verification to take hold in the dating industry, maybe I’m being overly optimistic.

I’m still looking for a branded service out there that takes care of all my online security needs, focusing on dating market is too small, I want a one-stop shop at a reasonable yearly cost.

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