Most of Your Users Can’t Upload ID — Now What?
Uploading ID excludes most of your members — 800M people have none and most cards do not work online. Let members bring their own proof instead.
Most of Your Users Can’t Upload ID — Now What?
This fascinating presentation on trust will change how you see the future. Learn how to shift risk off your platform — today and permanently.
RISK Incarnate
In today’s world, social platforms depend on profile verification — and members value it just as much. But when verification means uploading ID, privacy becomes the price we pay.
Most Users Will Never Verify
People do not want to surrender privacy to use a website. According to the World Bank, in 2025 roughly 800 million people don’t have ID at all. Most ID cards are not usable online. New Yorkers don’t drive, and only ~17.5% of citizens of Japan have a valid passport.
ID‑based verify — whether passport, license, or similar — will always exclude more than 90% of your membership.
Not because they’re untrustworthy, but because they don’t have the credentials to give.
Verify Without ID Cards?
It turns out you already own your digital self, it’s the links and profiles others already know you by.
Instead of gating access on private documents, here we let people “bring their own proof” — digital consistency, reputation history, a variety of alternate credentials. Confidence comes from transparency and audience — your history of connections, friends, and followers over time. This depth of confidence can be tabulated and reflected as a rank/score others trust.
This approach works alongside CLEAR (or any ID‑based verification) — it doesn’t compete. This does not interfere, people who have traditional solutions can offer this as a privacy conscious option members prefer.
Those who don’t have ID (the 90%+) still get access to credibility. No gate‑keeping. No unnecessary exclusion.
Authority-driven solutions always add risk of privacy violations, reviews and disputes.
Community-driven means members make it work. It’s automatic.
Verify Is A Benefit
For members, this is a benefit so natural that opting out is conspicuous. For platforms adopting this approach there are THREE major benefits.
- No loss of privacy, no risk of violation
- Available to anyone anywhere
- Members make it work, it’s completely automatic
Critically, verify unlocks value. Often 5x-10x “Unknown.” in lifetime value of accounts. When verify is a benefit, limitless numbers of members can access the value of Credibility without loss of privacy and that means the valuation of your brand and company are elevated to potential.
Your platform can create privacy features that were not even possible before. Critically, this is equally available to anyone in the world regardless of location or language.
Trust should never be conditional on credentials you happen to hold — especially when those credentials are scarce globally.
Join the circle of trusted platforms and adopt TruAnon (truanon.com) today—