Identity is Broken — Let’s Fix It

“What are the last four digits of your social security number?

“Which of these streets did you live on in 2001?”

“We can’t give you a Visa because it says here you were born in Pakistan.”

Fighting Algorithmic Bias in A.I.

“A.I. software is only as smart as the data used to train it. If there are many more white men than black women in the system, it will be worse at identifying the black women.”

Fraud vs. Friction

If you’ve been following the news, identity is everywhere. The acronym “KYC” (Know Your Customer) is well known in the financial services world but less common in social media and e-commerce.

Now that’s changing.

The Responsible Use of Face Recognition Technology

The past month brought the start of a long-overdue conversation around the appropriate use of rapidly advancing facial recognition technology.

How I Spent MLK Day — Online Airline Tickets in Africa

Monday night in Nigeria my Operations team and I had just finished a great discussion with some employees of Nigeria’s leading payments companies.

What Privacy Means

“Privacy means people know what they are signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly.”
 — Steve Jobs

There has been a lot written in the past 2 weeks about Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and data privacy in general.

Update to “What Privacy Means”

Call it coincidence or the fact that humans are hard-wired to look for patterns, but a day after I wrote about Facebook and privacy, the very first conversation I encountered after stepping off the plane in Accra was a group of Ghanians and Cameroonians complaining about…