On September 23rd and 24th Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center hosted an Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) open meeting, where 15 companies made presentations on technological solutions intended to help make the Internet safer for America’s youth. The Internet Safety Technical Task Force, you recall, was created in February 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace.

Anyone following the public meetings should be interested in icouldbe.org’s recently published news story about their participation. Frankly, icouldbe.org’s presentation was the only one by a company fully committed to providing an absolutely safe environment for youth on the Internet. In fact, their existence depends on it. We’re grateful to have them as a partner on the development of Trufina’s Child Protection Suite.

The most informative presentation at the meeting might have been the one given by a few of the youth representing Teenangels.org, which is part of WiredSafety.org Teenangels is a group of 13-18 year-old volunteers that have been specially trained by the local law enforcement, and many other leading safety experts in all aspects of online safety, privacy, and security. The teenangels research indicated that children and youth feel that their biggest online threat was from cyberbullying, and that the most effective means for limiting cyberbullying would be to provide tools to identify offenders, to kick the “bad actors� off the hosting community sites, and to ban them thereafter. So if the technology companies were listening, the keys are:

- Apparent anonymity needs to be accompanied by tools to hold offenders responsible. The teenangels specified tools for identity verification, not just age specific verification, so that offenders can be identified.
-The identity tools need to allow the hosting website to remove the offenders quickly, and to ban them permanently. So the tools must prove uniqueness.

As in daily life, cyberbullying is perpetrated by a minority of the community. Once children and youth realize that they will be banned permanently from participation, their behavior will improve, or they will not be allowed to play in the digital playground created by the hosting community sites.

Not coincidentally, the tools for limiting cyberbullying are similar to the ones that should be used for keeping predatory adults from interacting with children. And guess what, the combination of anonymity through the use of pseudonyms, coupled with identity verification by a hosting web site, would provide the same benefit of cleaning up adult behavior on forums and blogs Internet wide. Is it possible that improved behavior by adults might influence the behavior of our youth?

Due to overwhelming demand from our members, Trufina has updated their Verified Identity Cards to make it easier for people viewing an Identity Card to ask the owner to see more identity details. The viewer makes a request by filling out the form associated with the Identity Card. Examples of the Trufina Identity Card are:
https://profile.trufina.com/trubarb
or
https://profile.trufina.com/madsen
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When a request is submitted, the owner of the Trufina Verified ID card receives an email detailing the request. The owner can then choose to do one of the following:
1) Share more details of their identity with the requester.
2) Get more information from the requester before sharing details.
3) Ignore the request.

Trufina puts you in control of your identity, and provides you with the tools to share as little or as much as you want to. Protecting your online identity, as well as giving you the opportunity to build and establish trust in your online relationships.

Try it out. Click on the link above and ask me or Chris to share some details of our identities. We’ll send you an email with a link to the Trufina home page where you can view our IDs. (Note: security standards are in place for limiting the views on the shared id card).

A good summary of online identity management can be found at:
http://www.openparenthesis.org/2008/09/26/online-identity-management

Love to hear from you about our new service.

With an overwhelming amount of fraud in online auction sites there are now steps auction sites can take to aggressively identify scammers and keep them off the auction site. Many auction sites are able to identify scammers and block them from the auction site, using IP address validation/location, credit card verification, etc., but they don’t have a way to combat the scammers from signing up again, and again, and again. Trufina and identity verification can help. We recommend the follow steps:

1) Identify the bad guy. During the auction site registration process, require all buyers and sellers to get their identity verified from Trufina. Insisting on a verification process during registration will ensure that members are using their “real” identities. Requiring accountability will deter potential scammers from even registering on your site.

2)Shut down their account. Once you’ve confirmed abuse of your terms of service, on your site, and identify the responsible party, you can close/suspend their account, keeping a record of their Trufina identification number. Even if you do not ask the user for any specific information about themselves, you can still keep a “digital fingerprint” so they cannot register again.

3) Keep them off your site. If the “bad actor� tries to register again, they will have to go through the Trufina Identification process a second time. If they have already registered with us, they will not be able to register a second time, but rather be asked to login to their existing account. When they use their existing Trufina ID the auction site will know that they have already registered previously. This protects both the auction site (by making sure registrants are unique) and users (by making sure the auction site only receives the information they need).

Other benefits of having your buyer and sellers get their identity verified by Trufina include:
- Adding a Trufina ID URL (which links to a Trufina verified public profile) to their auction profile. This allows members to ask for more detailed information from the owner of the identity information.
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- Getting a criminal background check from Trufina. Share the results of the criminal background check with other members to create a trusted relationship.

Robert King, UpperBid CEO speaks out about Trufina “There was a huge problem with fraud before, but that has been almost eliminated with the addition of the Trufina verification process “.

Please share your thoughts and comments, we’d love to hear from you.

The Cranky Geeks episode 124 with Mr. John C Dvorak, Head Crank – as cranky as ever, Sebastian Rupley, Co-Crank, Editorial Director, PCMagCast.com, John Markoff, Senior Writer, The New York Times, and Tom Goldstein, Former Dean, UC Berkeley and Columbia’s J-Schools, discuss a number of different topics, the lead story dealing with journalism, blogging, and accountability.

Here is the summary – “There have been many people calling for more accountability among bloggers, along the lines of the rules that journalists usually have to observe. Is there a fundamental difference between bloggers and journalists that should put the kibosh on this? Should bloggers be allowed more freedom than journalists?”

A couple of relevant comments were made by John Markoff making the parallel of blogging to the CB radio’s of old (something he first said years ago) and the rest of the panel taking about anonymous blog posts. What standards should be applied to bloggers, should we/they be as accountable as traditional journalists, and if in fact they are journalists.

Since we launched with Identity.net we have upgraded our blog to support OpenID, through the WP-OpenID plugin (extremely easy to install and turn on). Not only should this cut down on spam, but also, with OpenID’s from Identity.net, will enable users to prove their identity. An example is

madsen.identity.net

Which is not only my OpenID URL from Identity.net, but also is tied to my RepSheet – or profile – which can include any number if identity attributes on it. The above shows that my first and last name have been verified, via Trufina. Other RepSheet’s can contain other pieces of ones identity, given the context of what it is used for (DOB, address, background check, etc.)

Stay tuned for more OpenID news from Identity.net in the coming days, and let them, or us, know what you think.

Posted via PRWeb:

Washington, DC (PRWEB) July 8, 2008 — Trufina Inc. (http://www.trufina.com), the leading provider of online identity verification (http://www.trufina.com) services is partnering with Identity.net, a web identity platform. By partnering with Trufina, Inc. for identity verification, Identity.net provides users with the option of verifying their identity attributes once and then reusing that verified identity information across the Internet. The combined solution puts the user firmly in control of their identity information, and allows them to share their data on the web as they see fit, without having to verify their identity information over and over again.

Identity applications are going mainstream and the Trufina partnership with Identity.net offers additional ways to securely share their identity information online. Interestingly, according to JanRain, a leader in the OpenID community, there are presently over 13,000 websites accepting OpenID’s, a leading Internet Identity Protocol. This represents a growth of a growth of 50% since the beginning of 2008. The Identity.net platform is the first to empower users to share (in a verifiable way) what they want with who they want using open, portable technology.

“As with all Trufina partners, Identity.net contractually adheres to Trufina’s data use policies, and Trufina’s commitment to the consumer, to assure individuals maintain full control of their identity. Trufina, in turn, adheres to industry leading security practices, as well as identity verification standards, to ensure we provide our partners with accurate identity information,” said Trufina’s President/CEO, Chris Madsen.

Identity verification is a prime building block for the identity-based services that drive the development focus for Identity.net. “Our research has identified 20 significant transaction types on the web where identity is a major consideration of people deciding whether or not to enter into a transaction. The partnership between Identity.net and Trufina is an important step towards enabling internet users to build trust in their online interactions, by establishing verified identities on the web that are portable across the growing array of ways that people use the web”, said Identity.net’s Chairman and CEO, Rob Monster.

“Identity.net is giving consumers unique ways to present their identity information, and control its use – setting the stage for flexible and powerful applications. Utilizing Trufina’s ID Server API, Identity.net is providing verification of individual customer attributes seamlessly. Notably, the Identity.net team completed integration utilizing Trufina’s API’s in less than a week,” says Jim Adler, President and CTO of Identity.net.

About Identity.net

Identity.net is the first identity platform to deliver a compelling value proposition to consumers, and publishers, while enabling the consumer to remain in full control of what is known about their identity. The company’s technology is protected by more than 53 issued patents, and based on more than a decade of advanced research in the field of online identity.

About Trufina, Inc.

Trufina is the leading provider of online identity verification and identity management services, enabling individuals to verify their identity attributes online, and providing the identity management tools for sharing that verified identity information with individuals and websites across the Internet. Trufina offers a unique method of building trust on the Internet. As the independent “trusted source” for id verification, Trufina protects the privacy of the individual while limiting the opportunity for fraud and identity theft from partnering websites. Based in Annapolis, MD, Trufina can be found at http://www.trufina.com.

Contacts for Press and Analysts:

Jim Kinchley

301.951.8998 x3

pr(at)trufina.com

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There’s lots of good stuff in the article - New Scientist article Don’t let cyber-spite ruin your good name, and a bunch of great companies mentioned - ClaimID, TrustPlus, and ReputationDefender . The issue is not just reputation, and the protection of your reputation (which is certainly the end result), but is the person posting a comment, negative or positive, really real or completely anonymous?

 

Just like in the real world, someone is more likely to shout some craziness from the bleachers, versus in an in person forum, where they have to introduce themselves in some fashion but they do have to prove they are identifiable.

 

Don’t let cyberspite destroy your good name

 

YOU buy a television on eBay. When it arrives, you eagerly unwrap it, only to find it is badly scratched. You return it, and leave a negative comment about the seller on the site. The next day, you find the seller has retaliated by posting a nasty comment about you, branding you as a time-waster. Suddenly, no one wants to sell to you and your reputation is in tatters.

 

Until now eBay’s rating system, which allows users of the auction and trading site to leave good or bad comments about their trading partners, has worked well. Sellers who ship out damaged goods, or items that do not match their online description, rightly get a black mark against their name. However, this system has recently come under increasing pressure from an all-too-human failing: spite. Sellers can easily retaliate against buyers who have named and shamed them, leaving unwarranted but highly visible comments – perhaps claiming that the buyers do not follow through with purchases, or needlessly return items they have bought.

 

Fear of this retaliatory “negging� can deter buyers from posting negative comments about their trading experiences. In turn, this threatens to undermine the trust that buyers place in sellers’ ratings.

 

So severe has the negging problem become that this month eBay was forced to change its rating system, preventing sellers from posting negative comments about bad buyers on the site.

 

In an online auction site like eBay, your reputation is your livelihood. Economists Daniel Houser of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and John Wooders of the University of Arizona, Tucson, have shown that sellers with positive ratings are able to sell items at higher prices, because buyers will willingly shell out greater sums just to be sure they are buying from a trustworthy source. And more people are likely to bid on items offered by those of good standing (Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, vol 15, p 353).

 

In a study to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research next month, Amar Cheema of Washington University in St Louis also found that when a seller’s reputation is less than squeaky clean, bidders are more likely to scrutinise additional costs such as shipping charges and bail out if they are too high. When the seller’s reputation is good, however, buyers are less interested in such surcharges, and sellers are more likely to secure a deal.

 

Trading websites are not the only place where nasty comments can have serious financial implications. When someone writes something malicious about you online it can be read by anyone typing your name into a search engine for years to come – including potential employers and university admissions staff. And as the number of websites that people use to buy and sell or make new friends and business contacts increases, so too does the need to guard against such acts of cyber-spite.

 

Along similar lines of the Linkedin Trufina Verified groups, we have also come up with respective Trufina Verified ID and Trufina Verified Background groups on Facebook.

Facebook has been touted as the next big thing, and has become one of the center of attractions for the online community, especially among adolescents. All that said, due to its huge numbers, and like any other site, Facebook too has the capability to succumb to online predators and fraudsters.

In an effort to avoid this, and to build a circle of trust among the Facebook community, Trufina has initiated the groups as mentioned above. If you are a Trufina verified online identity, and would like to project your “you are who you say you are” self on Facebook, please join the group using: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13076469612, and email us at facebook@trufina.com.

We have recently been receiving requests from users about initiating a Linkedin-Trufina verified ID and a Linkedin-verified background group. The groups have been initiated along with a view point of enrolling users with a verified ID and/or verified background.

The initiative is another effort at increasing the population of verified online identities, and we believe that Linkedin as a networking site is the perfect benchmark; primarily because Trufina verified users can now connect with fellow verified members personally and professionally, and be assured of their identities.

To join the groups, please use the following links: 

1)      Are you Trufina ID verified? Click here to join: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/35353/2370FD28CA65

2)      Are your Trufina verified background? Click here to join: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/69510/145F6A7B5B27W

We would be appreciative of anything you would like to add or recommend. So, if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to write to us. 

 

 

We’re excited to announce that we rolled out a new feature which allows a Trufina user to share an ID Card with anyone they want. Previously an ID Card could be shared only if both the sender and the recipient were Trufina members. Now, a Trufina member to share an ID Card with anyone who has a valid email address. Total control of the ID Cards is still entirely in the hands of the Trufina user – you control each piece of your identity -

name, age, street, city, state, email/IM addresses, background check, as well as all the others    

Each item can be individually included, or not, as well as showing the details or just that it has been verified (i.e. your actual age, or just that your age has been verified). You can also revoke access to your ID Card at any time.Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.-Chris