Trufina’s web partners have proved the value of requiring or allowing members to verify their identity information, augmented by verifying additional credentials as well. Professional networks are, well “professional”, mentoring sites are free of pedophiles, auction sites are free of frauds, and dating sites are safer, to name a few.

So, we are intrigued by “A new approach to taming the trolls” by Paul McNamara, in NetWork World‘s ‘Buzz, http://bit.ly/bqpmEz. Most everyone that has spent any time in a news media’s public comment section has seen where a few recalcitrant’s can spoil an otherwise valuable forum for public debate.

In this case, The Sun Chronicle, http://bit.ly/b4Kulo, first choose to shut the comments forum down, then decided to reopen the section based on requiring usage of real names and a credit card charge of 99 cents.

A couple of thoughts on why we’d advocate for Trufina’s style of verification:
- In these days of identity theft, why would the paper want to capture unnecessary credit card information from users, and shouldn’t users resist giving it.

- If a user has shared their verified identity information with the paper, why not let them use a pseudonym for their comments. They get to enjoy the freedom associated with anonymity, while accepting the responsibility of the paper knowing who they are.

- In the event that the commenter wants to participate in other online forums, or take responsibility and build trust in other online transactions, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if through their initial Trufina verification, participants could share verified identity information without additional cost or hassle.

One of these days we’ll connect with a publication on proving our point. The traditional newspaper industry has been reticent to limit any “traffic” to their online properties. Maybe they need to hear from participants that agree with our view. Reasonable people don’t want to subject themselves to unreasonable blather, and don’t mind taking responsibility for their behavior.

As the safe haven for your personal identity information, it is critically important that Trufina protects your information, and adheres to a very stringent privacy policy, mandating how that information is shared.

Every year we participate in TRUSTe’s certification program, allowing us to display their trustmarks, assuring you of our adherence to their highest standards. We’ve just been re-certified by TRUSTe and thought it a good occasion to remind everyone of the importance of such audits.

Look for the TRUSTe seal on all reputable websites. It is an indication of their commitment to customer privacy.

Since Trufina is in the “trust” business, I thought it would be appropriate to attend a recent talk “How to Win Sales and Influence People: The Art of Trust Based Selling” led by Charles H. Green, founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates and author of Trust-based Selling. Charlie was joined by Mark Roberge, VP Sales at HubSpot. The event was hosted by the Harvard Business School Association of Boston.

I was most curious about how their principles of trust based selling aligned with our view of Trufina’s role in helping build trust on the Internet. We are very careful to create a safe haven for member’s precious identity information at Trufina, and we work very hard to give you the tools to communicate that information in the most secure way possible. It is extremely important that we build our brand to reflect those basic tenets of our business.

Interestingly, I realized that the principles Charlie shared, and that Mark Roberge’s sales team practice at HubSpot, are equally important to our members as they use their verified identity information to build trust online. While this specific talk was about truth in selling, the larger theory has to do with trust in influencing people.

Two of Charlie’s principles of trust-based selling are:

– The power of reciprocity on influence, and where it appears in business, and

– Why trust-based selling doesn’t draw down on trust—it creates it in the sales process itself.

Trufina’s services are designed so that people interacting on the Internet can exchange verified identity information to build trust, which becomes the basis of influence. And trust, once initiated, establishes the foundation for stronger relationships moving forward.

Many of Trufina’s web partners serve as excellent examples of how sharing verified identity information becomes the foundation for exerting influence on others. MavenResearch might be the best example. By verifying their identity and other personal credentials, Maven’s members enhance their likelihood of being selected for paid phone consultations.

We also see many of Trufina’s members using their Trufina Seal as a way to build trust, and ultimately influence on their blogs and other commenting forums. We invite you to share your personal stories on how building trust has enhanced your online experience.

The Trusted Advisor.com whitepaper, “Think More Expertise Will Make You More Trusted? Think Again” answers other trust-related questions that you should find useful in building online relationships. You can get a copy at the Trusted Advisor website.

Facebook is under attack regarding their privacy policy. At the heart of the matter is whether privacy settings should default to “user must opt-out” vs. “user must opt-in”, as is so nicely explained by Bobbi L. Newman in her “Librarian by Day” blog, http://librarianbyday.net/2010/04/protect-your-privacy-opt-out-of-facebooks-new-instant-personalization-yes-you-have-to-opt-out/

This kind of “hidden privacy setting” couldn’t be farther away from Trufina’s philosophy. Trufina provides the user with TOTAL CONTROL over all of their identity data. Trufina members can decide who, what, where, and for how long they share their data with other individuals or other websites. Don’t you want to be in control of your identity, your data?

We’re listening! Thanks for letting us know that some of you needed help at the end of the identity verification process. Not only did we provide more details on exactly what was verified in your identity profile, but we added information on what elements of your identity are important to our partnering sites, and we provided instructions for taking the next step.

We hope this helps, as always let us know what you think.

We have just added Employment, Education & Professional License Verification (Beta)

In response to comments from our members and partnering websites, Trufina has expanded our services to include employment, education and professional license verifications. As online transactions between otherwise unrelated individuals increase on the Internet, there is a growing need to increase trust and reduce fraud by providing people the tools to prove that they are who they say they are and to prove that their claimed credentials are real as well. And, to ask others to share their verified information.

Many of you have asked “when can I verify my employment history?” Well the time is NOW. Imagine adding your employment and education history to an ID Card and then sharing it with a prospective new employer. Pretty cool. Remember you are still always in control of what gets shared, and who you share it with.

Trufina provides a secure repository for personal information, and the tools for securely sharing those attributes, under the complete control of the Trufina member. It’s your information. You determine who gets to see it, and when. Rather than entering personally identifiable information at every site
you choose to participate in, Trufina offers the possibility of managing that dissemination from one, secure, manageable location.

We’re always interested in hearing how you’re using your Trufina verified identity information. Let us know. If there are websites that you’d like us to partner with, or if you would like some help showing your verification on a site, please let us know that as well.

- The Trufina Team

Ever wonder if the tweet you are reading is really from who you think it is? Or wonder if you are following who you think you are? Or wonder who is following you? I certainly do, especially given the press over the last several months about falsified twitter accounts. Please try our identity verification service and ask your followers to do the same. Let us know what you think. You can use the code ‘twitterid’ at sign up to by-pass payment. We’re evaluating additional services and would appreciate any and all suggestions you may have for how this capability might be applied at Twitter, or any other site for that matter.

You can contact us at http://www.trufina.com/contactus.php

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.