Building Trust In The Age Of Anonimity
Internet, the place where we can be both completely exposed and anonymous at the same time. Our potential employers can Google us in a minute, our dates can stalk us over social media and the whole world can find out more about your life then you’d ever tell your own grandma. On the other hand, it’s easy to hide behind a strange email address, behind carefully constructed digital walls.
So how do you figure out who’s who and who you can trust in the sea of strangers that is internet? Whether you’re getting ready for a date you’ve set up over a dating site, you’re thinking of funding a project, or need a plumber and you’d like to know more before letting a stranger into your home, you’re just about to buy something on Craig’s List but you want to know more than an email address.
A Quick Background Check
Those are the situations where it’s handy to shed some light on the internet persona you’re about to interact with in the real world, and i.me is trying to make things easier on you with something you could call an instant-trust solution.
It uses instant felony checks, credit rating, social media analysis and facial recognition technology all combine to give you a comprehensive picture about the person you need to trust, or to show that you yourself are trustworthy.
The whole process is quite simple: Sign in, build your profile that i.me will verify with a number of third parties, customize it so you take control of what other people see and show how trustworthy you are when you need it:
When you share your i.me trust profile, you’re telling the people who have a need to know that you are who you say you are and that you are willing to be transparent to help build that initial bridge of trust. Except for your first name and the city and state in which you live, you decide what is disclosed.
Who’s Behind This?
This is what the team behind i.me have to say about themselves:
„We are a group of highly experienced entrepreneurs, financial executives and world-class engineers who are dedicated to providing the absolutely finest quality background data available anywhere on the Internet for any price.“
But to be completely transparent, you can find their names, photos and bios right there on their webpage. This service is all about trust and transparency, after all.
We sometimes feel that in the era of digital espionage, data mining and email proofing, anonymity is our ounly defence, but it is really a security blanket – it doesn’t make us safe,it just makes us feel as though we are. Maybe our best defence is laying everything out in the open and interactiong with others who do so, forming a community based on trust.
