Account verification is the process of verifying that a new or existing account is owned and operated by a specified real individual or organization. A number of websites, for example social media websites, offer account verification services. Verified accounts are often visually distinguished by check mark icons or badges next to the names of individuals or organizations.
Account verification can enhance the quality of online services, mitigating sockpuppetry, bots, trolling, spam, vandalism, fake news, disinformation and election interference.
Account verification was introduced by Twitter in June 2009, [1] [2] [3] initially as a feature for public figures and accounts of interest, individuals in "music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business and other key interest areas". [4] A similar verification system was adopted by Google+ in 2011, [5] Facebook page in October 2015 (Available in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand) Facebook profile and Facebook page in 2018 (Available in Worldwide) Instagram in 2014, [6] and Pinterest in 2015. [7] On YouTube, users are able to submit a request for a verification badge once they obtain 100,000 or more subscribers. [8] It also has an "official artist" badge for musicians and bands. [9]
In July 2016, Twitter announced that, beyond public figures, any individual would be able to apply for account verification. [10] [11] This was temporarily suspended in February 2018, following a backlash over the verification of one of the organisers of the far-right Unite the Right rally due to a perception that verification conveys "credibility" or "importance". [12] [13] In March 2018, during a live-stream on Periscope, Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, discussed the idea of allowing any individual to get a verified account. [14] Twitter reopened account verification applications in May 2021 after revamping their account verification criteria. [15] This time offering notability criteria for the account categories of government, companies, brands, and organizations, news organizations and journalists, entertainment, sports and activists, organizers, and other influential individuals. [16] Instagram began allowing users to request verification in August 2018. [17]
In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, announced that purchasers of political or issue-based advertisements would be required to verify their identities and locations. [18] [19] He also indicated that Facebook would require individuals who manage large pages to be verified. [18] In May 2018, Kent Walker, senior vice president of Google, announced that, in the United States, purchasers of political-leaning advertisements would need to verify their identities. [20]
In November 2022, Elon Musk included a blue verification check mark with a paid Twitter Blue monthly membership. Prior to Musk's acquisition of Twitter, Twitter offered this check mark at no charge to confirmed high profile users. [21] On December 19, 2022, Twitter introduced two new check mark colors: gold for accounts from official businesses and organizations, and grey for accounts from governments or multilateral organizations. The type of check mark can be confirmed by visiting the profile page, then clicking or tapping on the check mark. [22]
Identity verification services are third-party solutions which can be used to ensure that a person provides information which is associated with the identity of a real person. Such services may verify the authenticity of identity documents such as drivers licenses or passports, called documentary verification, or may verify identity information against authoritative sources such as credit bureaus or government data, called nondocumentary verification.[ citation needed ]
The uploading of scanned or photographed identity documents is a practice in use, for example, at Facebook. [23] According to Facebook, there are two reasons that a person would be asked to send a scan of or photograph of an ID to Facebook: to show account ownership and to confirm their name. [23]
In January 2018, Facebook purchased Confirm.io, [24] a startup that was advancing technologies to verify the authenticity of identification documentation.
Behavioral verification is the computer-aided and automated detection and analysis of behaviors and patterns of behavior to verify accounts. Behaviors to detect include those of sockpuppets, bots, cyborgs, trolls, spammers, vandals, and sources and spreaders of fake news, disinformation and election interference. Behavioral verification processes can flag accounts as suspicious, exclude accounts from suspicion, or offer corroborating evidence for processes of account verification.
Identity verification is required to establish bank accounts and other financial accounts in many jurisdictions. Verifying identity in the financial sector is often required by regulation such as Know Your Customer or Customer Identification Program. Accordingly, bank accounts can be of use as corroborating evidence when performing account verification.
Bank account information can be provided when creating or verifying an account or when making a purchase.
Postal address information can be provided when creating or verifying an account or when making and subsequently shipping a purchase. A hyperlink or code can be sent to a user by mail, recipients entering it on a website verifying their postal address.
A telephone number can be provided when creating or verifying an account or added to an account to obtain a set of features. During the process of verifying a telephone number, a confirmation code is sent to a phone number specified by a user, for example in an SMS message sent to a mobile phone. As the user receives the code sent, they can enter it on the website to confirm their receipt.
An email account is often required to create an account. During this process, a confirmation hyperlink is sent in an email message to an email address specified by a person. The email recipient is instructed in the email message to navigate to the provided confirmation hyperlink if and only if they are the person creating an account. The act of navigating to the hyperlink confirms receipt of the email by the person.
The added value of an email account for purposes of account verification depends upon the process of account verification performed by the specific email service provider.
Multi-factor account verification is account verification which simultaneously utilizes a number of techniques.
The processes of account verification utilized by multiple service providers can corroborate one another. OpenID Connect includes a user information protocol which can be used to link multiple accounts, corroborating user information. [25]
On some services, account verification is synonymous with good standing.
Twitter reserves the right to remove account verification from users' accounts at any time without notice. [26] Reasons for removal may reflect behaviors on and off Twitter and include: promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease; supporting organizations or individuals that promote the above; inciting or engaging in the harassment of others; violence and dangerous behavior; directly or indirectly threatening or encouraging any form of physical violence against an individual or any group of people, including threatening or promoting terrorism; violent, gruesome, shocking, or disturbing imagery; self-harm, suicide; and engaging in other activity on Twitter that violates the Twitter Rules. [27]
In April 2023, Blue ticks were removed from all Twitter accounts that had not subscribed to Twitter Blue. [28]
Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam.
A digital identity is data stored on computer systems relating to an individual, organization, application, or device. For individuals, it involves the collection of personal data that is essential for facilitating automated access to digital services, confirming one's identity on the internet, and allowing digital systems to manage interactions between different parties. It is a component of a person's social identity in the digital realm, often referred to as their online identity.
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is a social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, images, and videos in short posts commonly known as "tweets" and like other users' content. The platform also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities, a chatbot (Grok), job search, and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature.
Internet fraud prevention is the act of stopping various types of internet fraud. Due to the many different ways of committing fraud over the Internet, such as stolen credit cards, identity theft, phishing, and chargebacks, users of the Internet, including online merchants, financial institutions and consumers who make online purchases, must make sure to avoid or minimize the risk of falling prey to such scams.
Online identity management (OIM), also known as online image management, online personal branding, or personal reputation management (PRM), is a set of methods for generating a distinguished web presence of a person on the Internet. Online identity management also refers to identity exposure and identity disclosure, and has particularly developed in the management on online identity in social network services or online dating services.
Credit card fraud is an inclusive term for fraud committed using a payment card, such as a credit card or debit card. The purpose may be to obtain goods or services or to make payment to another account, which is controlled by a criminal. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is the data security standard created to help financial institutions process card payments securely and reduce card fraud.
Identity correlation is, in information systems, a process that reconciles and validates the proper ownership of disparate user account login IDs that reside on systems and applications throughout an organization and can permanently link ownership of those user account login IDs to particular individuals by assigning a unique identifier to all validated account login IDs.
Digital inheritance is the passing down of digital assets to designated beneficiaries after a person’s death as part of the estate of the deceased. The process includes understanding what digital assets exist and navigating the rights for heirs to access and use those digital assets after a person has died.
Cybersquatting is the practice of registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name, with a bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.
A recent extension to the cultural relationship with death is the increasing number of people who die having created a large amount of digital content, such as social media profiles, that will remain after death. This may result in concern and confusion, because of automated features of dormant accounts, uncertainty of the deceased's preferences that profiles be deleted or left as a memorial, and whether information that may violate the deceased's privacy should be made accessible to family.
Since the arrival of early social networking sites in the early 2000s, online social networking platforms have expanded exponentially, with the biggest names in social media in the mid-2010s being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The massive influx of personal information that has become available online and stored in the cloud has put user privacy at the forefront of discussion regarding the database's ability to safely store such personal information. The extent to which users and social media platform administrators can access user profiles has become a new topic of ethical consideration, and the legality, awareness, and boundaries of subsequent privacy violations are critical concerns in advance of the technological age.
A social bot, also described as a social AI or social algorithm, is a software agent that communicates autonomously on social media. The messages it distributes can be simple and operate in groups and various configurations with partial human control (hybrid) via algorithm. Social bots can also use artificial intelligence and machine learning to express messages in more natural human dialogue.
In Australia, there are three main forms of digital identity:
PlainSite is a US based website dedicated to legal data transparency advocacy developed in conjunction by Think Computer Corporation and the charitable organization Think Computer Foundation. PlainSite provides both free and paid access to legal documents and information about the US legal system on a variety of subjects and caselaw. The website previously collected legal documents via the Free Law Project's RECAP archive until the archive adopted a fee-based approach.
On July 15, 2020, between 20:00 and 22:00 UTC, 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were reportedly compromised by outside parties to promote a bitcoin scam. Twitter and other media sources confirmed that the perpetrators had gained access to Twitter's administrative tools so that they could alter the accounts themselves and post the tweets directly. They appeared to have used social engineering to gain access to the tools via Twitter employees. Three individuals were arrested by authorities on July 31, 2020, and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and unauthorized computer access related to the scam.
Twitter verification is a system intended to communicate the authenticity of a Twitter account. Since November 2022, Twitter users whose accounts are at least 90 days old and have a verified phone number receive verification upon subscribing to X Premium or Verified Organizations; this status persists as long as the subscription remains active.
Spy pixels or tracker pixels are hyperlinks to remote image files in HTML email messages that have the effect of spying on the person reading the email if the image is downloaded. They are commonly embedded in the HTML of an email as small, imperceptible, transparent graphic files. Spy pixels are commonly used in marketing, and there are several countermeasures in place that aim to block email tracking pixels. However, there are few regulations in place that effectively guard against email tracking approaches.
Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022; Musk acted as CEO of Twitter until June 2023 when he was succeeded by Linda Yaccarino. In a move that, despite Yaccarino's accession, was widely attributed to Musk, Twitter was rebranded to X on July 23, 2023, and its domain name changed from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024.
On April 20, 2023, Twitter began removing verification status for notable individuals, causing a controversy among Twitter users. The website's system was altered, allowing any individual to receive verification for a monthly fee, an act which saw significant criticism.