Verification Rethought: Verified.onl

Rethinking Profile Pictures and Identity Online

NOTE: Twitter Verification is Broken

Note: We have this to Twitter’s ‘Bluesky’ project and their call for ways to decentralize verification.

Imagine if everyone had access to the facemask tech from Mission Impossible. Anyone could become you, steal your face and name, then interface with the world as your doppelganger. Imagine the confusion, the chaos, the fraud and uncertainty… here’s the thing, this essentially is the reality online. Profile pictures can be copy and pasted, your likeness cloned in seconds at no cost. This is a dream for con-men, cat-fish, disinfo peddlers and election meddlers.

The Problem

Our identity online consists of text (name) and images (face), both of them can be copied, pasted and saved ad Infinitum. If web based cash had a double-spend problem before bitcoin/blockchain then web based identity has a double-faced problem.

The Solution

How do you provide a visual representation of your likeness online in a way only you can? The answer lays in depth mapping hardware in smartphones. Anyone can take and upload a photo of you, only you can 3D scan your head on demand to provide a 3D selfie.

A picture (left) can be saved and re-used by anyone___________A 3D selfie (right) only you can provide, becuase no one else owns your head.

The Product

Today Rethought is announcing a concept: Verified.onl, a universal platform-agnostic tool to verify any account you have on the web: Twitter, Tinder, eBay, Airbnb, UpWork etc. This symbol ✪ will be to digital identity what ₿ is to digital cash. Verification shouldn’t be about status it should be about making the world of bits as relaiable and trustworthy as the world of atoms. It should be univeral and available to everyone.

How to Verify Yourself

Download the Verified.ONL app, login with Twitter (for example) to claim your matching Verified.ONL handle. Only you can have a verified.onl handle that matches your Twitter handle.

Provide a depth-map selfie (locally) this is then compared to your profile picture using offline facial recognition (locally) if it matches a verification URL is generated and added to your bio: verified.onl/✪/twitter/louisanslow the open verification symbol ✪ is added to your screenname to signal you have verified your account and that it can be verified by clicking the link.

END GAME

It will be easy for services to automate the confirmation of verification, Twitter for example could automatically verify a verified.onl verification and replace the open verification symbol with its own. UpWork and Airbnb could require verification to sell services.

Verification can eventually extend to individual actions. Uber could require a driver to verify their presence at the start of each shift. High profile CEOs and world leaders could verify significant tweets by tweeting a link proving the communication was directly from them. Emails asking for money wires, login details or high stakes actions could be verified via a verified.onl link also.