Online Trust

February is a busy month in the online dating calendar but with increasing reports of fraud and identity theft in online dating it is clear more needs to be done to protect genuine daters from scammers.

Last week Michael Finney from KGO Radio ran a segment called "Online Dating Has a New Sweetheart - Fake Identities" warning his Bay Area listeners of the risks of dating online with the rise of fraudsters.

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow and that four letter word LOVE is on many peoples lips. But while 1 in 5 relationships now start online, it's not all chocolate and roses when it comes to cyber-romance.

As more and more people sign up to online dating services, fraudsters are moving in fast and scams, fake profiles and financial fraud are on a steady increase.

With Facebook owned Instagram asking users for photo ID, and Twitter's Vine adding verified badges, this clearly signals a need to be able to verify user accounts.

Twitter Verification - why everyone wants it

Every day we get asked "when will Twitter accept miiCard for the blue tick?"

At the same time we're seeing more people wanting to get verified on Twitter to prove their identity and protect themselves from fake and imposter accounts.

Identity fraud is now the biggest single cause of all fraud, the UK's Fraud Prevention Service CIFAS revealed in their Annual Report issued last week.

CIFAS found fraud is up 5% overall compared to 2011, and of that, more than 50% was made up of identity related fraud.

Happy New Year! With 2013 already in full swing we have seen a number of calls for stronger trust online:

As the year draws to a close we wanted to reflect on what has been a big year at miiCard.

2012 HIGHLIGHTS

MIICARD SERVICE

Key developments of the miiCard service include:

We were at IDentity.Next'12 in The Hague, Netherlands this week to explore global innovation in digital identity.

Levels of Trust

On day one we jumped ino levels of trust online, looking at social login trials for finance applications, age and document verification right through to passport-equivalent identity proofing.

It has been a big week for trust online and we wanted to highlight some of the identity-related stories making headlines this week:

1. Internet dating site creating fake profiles

Last night Channel 4 news reported Global Personals, a white-label dating platform that powers 7,500 of online dating sites, had employed a team of people to create fake profiles and message registered users to get users to subscribe to the paid service which allows sending and receiving of messages with other dating prospects.

We came across an article on Econsultancy last week that reported online directory Yelp was going to expose businesses buying fake reviews.