I commend Second Life on their decision to offer a voluntary verification policy for their members. They are the first big social network to take a step toward adopting this technology.
The way I understand it, if you are a member that has chosen not to be verified you won’t be allowed access into any land that is flagged as restricted but you can stay in the PG-13 type of areas.
I’ve visited Second Life’s blog post where this announcement was made and read a bunch of the comments. One in particular makes me want to stress an important difference we think businesses must consider when selecting an identity provider and that is if the vendor is an independent 3rd party:
You say that “Linden Lab does not share Resident data for marketing or other purposes”, can someone from LindenLab state for the record that Integrity will do the same??
Many data providers offer identity verification solutions which makes sense given they collect, store and sell data as their primary business and data is a crucial part of verification. But being a seller of data and also capturing data for verification, could definitely create a conflict of interest in the minds of consumers about how their data will be used. And it also has the potential to limit match rates because the data being used is limited to the sources of that particular vendor.
Back in February we released a whitepaper about identity verification which included some questions to consider when selecting an id verification vendor. Two come to mind right now and are worth pointing out here:
Does the vendor promote the responsible use of data?
The right solution will have strict protocols for using and sharing data and will access data on a real-time basis, not collect and store it for any other purpose. Additionally, the system should provide different permission levels to limit how much and what type of data is shared within your business.
What data sources are used?
Find a vendor that works with multiple providers and does not restrict its data to any single data provider. The system should be designed with the ability to access multiple independent data sources including foreign data.
