Company News
Meta Verified Will Offer ID Protection – at a Price
Meta Verified, a program that looks to unify verification on all Meta’s platforms, will be charging users for the service.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in an Instagram post that for $11.99 a month on the web and $14.99 a month on iOS, users on Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms will be able to submit their government ID and get a blue verification badge. The service will be introduced in Australia and New Zealand first, and more countries will follow, Zuckerberg said.
‘This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,’ Zuckerberg wrote in the post.
Meta has historically granted verification to notable users like politicians, executives, members of the press and organisations to signal their legitimacy. The company’s new subscription service is similar to Twitter’s revamped service called Twitter Blue, which also grants users a verification badge if they pay a monthly fee.
Twitter launched its updated Twitter Blue subscription service in December after the company’s new owner, Elon Musk, pulled and delayed the initial launch. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October, has said the new verification system will be ‘the great leveller’ and give ‘power to the people.’ Twitter Blue briefly launched in November, but it was pulled after users abused the new paid option by impersonating celebrities and brands.
A Meta spokesperson said that there are impersonation protections in place with Meta Verified subscriptions. In order to qualify, users must be at least 18 years old, meet minimum account activity requirements and submit a government ID that matches their profile name and photo. Subscriptions will also include ‘proactive monitoring’ for account impersonation, according to the spokesperson.
TSA Hires Dignari for Digital ID Services
The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has awarded Dignari a biometric service contract, valued at $23.5 million, for credential and access management services.
The contract is for a year but with three one-year options.
The TSA wants to better define, plan, promote and coordinate the implementation of biometric capabilities that reflect industry best practices.
Dignari will perform services including project management and implementation oversight and analysis. It also will provide architecture integration strategies and engineering and technical support.
The company sells mission-critical security and credentialing services exclusively to the US government. Those sales include a $29 million contract for digital identity services with the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) last year, and a Blanket Purchase Agreement with DHS worth $99 million.
CSC Warns of eIDAS 2 Risks
The Cloud Signature Consortium (CSC) has issued an open letter 1 to warn of the risks to consumers and the trust services sector of proposed amendments in the eIDAS 2 regulation.
Issued together with other organisations that represent stakeholders in the qualified trust services sector, the letter expresses their concerns over the risks in article 24 of eIDAS 2 (electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services).
CSC’s concerns stem from the member states’ mandate that the assurance level ‘substantial’ in article 24 of the eIDAS 2 regulation be dropped. The original text of the regulation proposal allowed the user identity verification for the issuance of a qualified electronic signature and a qualified electronic attestation of attributes by making use of an eID scheme with an assurance level that is either ‘substantial’ or ‘high’, whereas the final version of the text adopted by the Council of EU has the references to ‘substantial’ removed.
The qualified trust services sector has expressed concerns that a number of extensively used eID schemes within Europe not only have an assurance level ‘substantial’, but are also the preferred method of identity verification for citizens, due to their increased user-friendliness.
According to CSC’s open letter, the numbers and statistics highlight that countries with a level of assurance (LoA) substantial eID scheme saw a growing adoption and use of it.
Members of the organisations that have issued the open letter have the concern that should the LoA ‘substantial’ be removed, existing popular schemes will have to stop. Policy makers expect that the move will result in increased adoption of LoA high schemes of the likes of the eIDAS 2 wallet.
The open letter states the signatory companies are at the disposal of policymakers for any clarifications and look forward to working with them to ensure a balanced text.
Onfido Says Crypto Regulations Would Extend Need for Strong KYC
ID technology company, Onfido, is drawing attention to regulatory proposals that could prompt a wave of demand for digital identity verification solution in the UK’s cryptocurrency space.
As the company explains in a new blog post 2, His Majesty’s Treasury recently published a proposal for a ‘Future Financial Services Regime for Cryptoassets’ seeking to bring some more regulation to the crypto space in the wake of scandals such as the collapse of the FTX exchange last year. The central premise of the proposal is to extend the reach of current regulations beyond the shores of the UK.
At the moment, UK-based firms offering crypto exchanges or wallets are required to comply with anti-money laundering regulations set up in 2019, which are overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority. HM Treasury suggests that the need for compliance be extended beyond the 40 or so FCA-registered crypto companies to foreign crypto companies that operate in the UK, and to UK-based companies offering such cryptocurrency solutions and services overseas.
HM Treasury also proposes new regulations aimed at preventing abuses in the cryptocurrency markets that would further increase the onus on crypto companies to establish strong KYC (Know Your Customer) systems.
Should the government body’s proposal be realised into an expanded set of regulations, it could prompt a significant number of additional crypto companies to start looking for remote identity verification solutions for their end users. Onfido believes that selfie-based identity verification technology offers a ready solution, using facial recognition to match end users against images of their official IDs.
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