Trufina was built from the ground up to allow any on-line business to build Identity Verification and Management into their site. Trufina can be incorporated as a seamless and fully integrated user experience or as a simple link to MyTrufina. The benefit to a partner’s community of users is the ability for its members to quickly establish trust with individuals they encounter on the Internet and/or at a partner’s site.

Related posts:

1. Trufina’s Free Verified Personal Information Community
2. MyDatingPro Launching on Relationship Exchange
3. Dolphin Smart Community Builder

Read/WriteWeb has an overview of identity verification services. Having worked with Trufina and Opinity, I am intimately familiar with how they operate and current issues that need to be addressed if these companies hope to succeed.

At first, background checks were a solution looking for a problem. The thinking was along the lines of “We do checks for major corporate HR departments, why not branch out into other (seemingly) logical markets?�

Bzzzt. Wrong answer. None of these companies knew the first think about dating or social networking, and it showed, sometimes painfully, during their pitches to dating site business development teams.

That was two years ago.

Now Sentinel is providing searching capabilities to MySpace’s sex offender alert system. MySpace may use image-analysis software and other means whereby sex offenders using MySpace can be recognized, even if they don’t use their real names in registering. I talked to Riya about using their facial recognition on dating sites for matching purposes, as I understand it talks are underway with most large dating sites although I’m not clear on the status.

Sometimes you need to stare at a problem for a while before the solution becomes apparent. The problem is that others are reacting quicker to changes in the marketplace and launching competitive services for most less cost and overall resources.

I recently heard from Harrison Tang at Spokeo. Spokeo is a content and profile aggregator built by Stanford roommates. No VC, no big development team. Just a few smart people in close proximity learning from the mistakes of others who previously trod down a similar path.

This madness with 20+ profiles is ridiculous and borders on insulting. I can only hope that dating sites will allow for a Master Profile which can be shared among several sites and manageable via a centralized site.

Lots of entrants into the marketplace, everyone is having a hard time monetizing traffic. Either you make money on identity or background checks or advertising. So far, we’re not seeing a lot of either, but it’s early days for identity companies. There are plenty of them in the deadpool. As usual, it’s going to take timing and a unique value proposition to succeed.

No related posts.

Busy day, few things you should know about. One-time client Trufina has announced a new free service. No link to press release on their own website, hrrumpf.

College Park, Md.–Trufina Inc., a leader in the Online Identity
Verification space, announces today a unique initiative to bring
verified personal information to the Internet community–at no charge.

With Trufina, a subscriber has an “Internet ID card� that has been
verified to be accurate. Trufina users can also have several versions
of their ID cards, much like a user might have several different credit
cards in her wallet. When a user wants to assert something about their
identity, they can choose the appropriate card. And because that
information has been verified by a trusted source, personal information
can be trusted to be accurate. Trufina users have complete control over
their IDs and can choose where that information is used–and who can
view it.

Verified users can also “assert� information on their own behalf. Once
Trufina’d, subscribers can assert their age, address, phone number and
other information for use across the Internet. For example, a user who
would like to purchase wine over the Internet could assert their age
with no trouble whatsoever.

Trufina IDs are applicable across many areas of the Internet. For
example, eBay users can reduce fraud by requesting buyers and sellers
to sign up for free Trufina ID cards and then sharing that ID with
them, reducing fraud and increasing trust.

Websites can also implement Trufina’s personal information validation
services to easily offer the verification of personal information for
their users. For example, social networks can offer the Trufina ID free
of charge to their subscriber base, reducing the occurrence of
inaccurate information. Users of that social network will know, upon
seeing the Trufina shield in conjunction with a subscriber’s profile,
that the viewed information asserted has been proven accurate. In
addition, Websites can now be assured that when a Trufina user
registers and uses their site that each Trufina member is unique, as
they can only register for the Trufina service one time.

Users can also join by going directly to www.trufina.com and
registering for a free account. Once completing a short questionnaire,
verifying the user’s identity, a user receives her own Trufina ID that
she can use anywhere on the Internet. Members can reuse their Trufina
ID whenever ID verification is needed.

Christian Madsen, Trufina’s CEO, said, “Trufina’s service is
user-centric, putting all the control in the user’s hands. Trufina
users control their own information by controlling what information is
visible to others. This was critical for our user base and in line with
our company’s philosophy and policy to give our users complete control
and privacy.�

About Trufina (www.trufina.com)
Trufina is the first company that offers users the ability to verify
personal information, control it, and share it across the Internet. At
Trufina we strive to lead in the development and deployment of the most
advanced verified identity system on the Internet. Trufina’s unique
approach brings more confidence and integrity to any online experience
by removing the guesswork of determining if the other person across the
Internet is being truthful.

No related posts.