Comment by kiklion

5 years ago

There’s an ID verification service, at least in the US, where you go to webpage A who wants you to confirm identity, A then redirects you to the service. The service asks a bunch of questions like ‘which of these cars have been related to you’ or ‘which of these addresses belonged to you when you lived in town x?’

That generates a score where the service determines if you are who you say you are and returns the result to the calling web page.

But I assume it uses background check/credit check information which may be limited to the US and is a paid service as compared to phone validation.

I've had good luck answering those questions by pretending I know nothing about my own life, and using only information I can find from search engines to answer those questions (eg "What city is LAKE STREET in" - search for each option they give you to see if it has a Lake St). The few times this has failed (probably 70% success rate), they usually just want to send you a letter in the mail instead. I'd much rather wait a few days than end up confirming their surveillance records about me.