Know Who You’re Dealing With: The Case for Verification in a World of Strangers

It is the era of an unprecedented contact with other people whom we have never seen. We shop with sellers on the internet whom we will never see, plan to meet people on apps whom we will never meet, hire remote workers whom we will never meet based on whatever they have decided to share, and extend a trust to people whose identities are just what they have decided to present to us. To the great part, this is spectacularly effective and it is one of the silent wonders of the modern world that so much collaboration occurs between strangers. But it also leaves room to be deceived, and those who move in this world most carefully are those who possess an elementary truth; that, where the entertainment is genuine, it is a good thing to know with whom you are actually to transact business.

Verification, as the process of ensuring that one is who they say they are, is unobtrusively one of the skills of life in the digital era. It is not about being paranoid or seeing everyone as a potential enemy, which is tiresome, and would pollute the myriad of sincere relationships that enrich contemporary life. It is about judgment and being able to check when a case is worth checking and being able to do so in a way that one can show that he can be trusted and should be. It is an examination of the reasons why verification is important, when it is worthwhile, and how common citizens have now been able to verify who they are interacting with in a manner that was previously unachievable.

Why online identity is so easy to fake

To comprehend the importance of verification, one can take note of the thinness of online identity in reality. To create an identity online, it takes virtually nothing: a name of your own, a personal image, with or without ownership of the image, contact information, including or not including real, and self-descriptions. None of it is in itself verified. There is nothing that compels the claims to be true. One can pose as any person, under a different name, with a different background, with different intentions and there is nothing at the surface to prove him or her wrong.

This convenience of creation allows an entire range of cheating. On the mild side are the little exaggerations and choosy facts which are indulged in by most. More serious misrepresentations are further on and involve people hiding their identity, misrepresenting their purpose or creating a persona that is meant to deceive. At the extreme end are the deliberate lies and swindles, the faked identity constructed completely out of fabricated or stolen information, with the express purpose of deceiving, defrauding, or exploiting. The only thing that can hold this spectrum together is that it is not visible to the eye. The cheater and the truth-teller can appear the same on the surface, and this is the very thing that causes the deception and the verification to be useful.

It is that same distance that renders Internet communication so convenient that is the same distance that renders deception easy. Faced with each other, our senses and general situation accomplish a lot of checking by themselves; we can read a face, judge a response, depend on common relationships. Online, all that is lost and we have to do with what one wants to put. To anyone who has ventured beyond mere trustworthiness lent to someone they have met online that difference between the self one presents to the world and the self that they actually possess is a real weakness, a vulnerability that should be avoided at all costs when there is a good reason to do so.

When verification is worth it

Not all online communication requires verification, and it takes the skill to recognize when it occurs. This is led by the principle of proportion: the greater the stakes, the greater is the warrant of a check. Light, informal, interactions seldom require examination, and I would consider it tiring and unnecessary to treat such interactions with so many doubts. But there are some cases that are risky enough that it is just smart to verify the identity of the person that you are doing business with.

Examples of the circumstances in which verification is really required. The face-to-face meeting of a person who has not met previously and especially the one who has been met via an app is one of the situations when verifying the identity of the contact party and ensuring his/her safety is reasonable. Getting into a major business with a stranger, be it purchase of an item of value, sending of money, or an agreement, is another as fraud in such cases can be an expensive affair. Venturing into a serious relationship with a person, whether romantically inclined or not, whose identity you are concerned verifying. And anything where something does not seem right, where it is possible that the story of a person is not working or that you have a feeling that something is amiss, is a good candidate to checking. In both these instances, the stakes are real enough so that the little effort of doing due diligence of who you are dealing with would obviously be worthwhile.

It is also important to note that the price of misplaced trust is not necessarily financial. Emotional price, safety, and continued diminution of your trust at all can be emotionally costly, not to mention the harm of being a victim of identity fraud. By avoiding these consequences, verification is not only saving you money, but also your health, and your ability to interact freely with the world. The similarity is that verification can be most useful when it is most needed when the greatest expense would be incurred in trusting. A quick look prior to a high stakes interaction can save a lot of damage, either through monetary loss, actual harm or the emotional damage of being lied to. It is learning to realize these moments, to act on them instead of sweeping a gnudging doubt away, that makes verification more than a mere abstract idea but an actual protection.

How verification has become accessible

Most of the internet history showed that there were very little practical means of ordinary people to check with whom they were dealing on the internet. You might put in a name, but no further without resources and skills not in most people. That is no longer so much the case, and various tools are now available to allow an ordinary person to verify identities in a way that was previously inaccessible.

These tools work by drawing on the information that’s connected to the pieces of identity a person provides. A reverse address search, for instance, can reveal information associated with a physical address someone has given you, helping confirm whether the details they’ve provided are consistent and legitimate. Other approaches let you check information tied to a phone number, search for where a person’s photo appears online, or look up details associated with a name. Each of these gives you a way to test whether a person’s claimed identity holds together, turning the pieces of information they’ve provided into something you can actually verify rather than simply trusting on faith.

The strength of these instruments is that they allow you to compare what you have been told with what the world at large displays. When the address, phone number, photo, name someone has provided you is tied to information that is in line with his story, that is he/she is valid. When it relates to something conflicting, a new name, a new existence, indications of a fake personality, that is a warning to be considered. Whichever it is, you end up with information you can weigh, which makes a leap of blind trust a more informed approach as to whether this is someone you can safely transact with or not.

Using verification wisely

Like any instrument, verification is best employed wisely, and a couple of principles can be employed to ensure it is beneficial to you. To begin with, these tools only give signals, not certainties. The facts they present are a clue to take into account, not a surety, and conclusions must be balanced with all other facts you have, and not an automatic decision. Red flag in a discovery is a cause to check further and be cautious whereas encouraging facts reinforce but do not necessarily mean that a person is real. When applied to the knowledge that you have, verification is a useful contribution to your judgment and not a substitution of it.

Second, do verification to defend yourself and not to encroach. The good intention is to verify the identity of people you are actually communicating with, where the stakes bear it out, such that you can safely extend the trust. This is contrary to the purpose of such tools to snoop into the lives of other people who may have nothing to do with you that borders on reasonable self-protection to trespass. It does not go out of track to keep verification concerned with your own safety and with those interactions that actually matter to you, making it ethical and useful.

Third, allow verification to facilitate openness, not substitute it. It is not to be paranoid of all people but to be trustworthy with the ability to look when it counts. The fact that you can be relatively certain that the person is who they claim to be when the game is high actually allows you to interact with the online world more freely, as you are not left with the choice between either soy, trusting and distrusting all the same. To be open and connected and yet safe, to spread trust and have the ability to base it on something solid when you need, all this is made possible by verification and only when wisdom is applied.

The warning signs that should prompt a check

In addition to being aware of the types of scenarios in which verification is important, it is useful to be aware of the telltale signs that you should consider in determining whether or not you are dealing with the right person because such signs tend to reflect prior to it becoming expensive. Inconsistency in the story of a person is one of the most evident ones. When facts change with time, when the facts do not perhaps fit, when one remains vague in a place where specifics would be natural, these snarls are often merely the tip of a deeper lie. Being conscious of that sense that things are not conforming, and not attributing it to some other cause, is often your initial step to the realization that verification is justified.

Both the unwillingness to give out or verify simple information or evasiveness in case of reasonable inquiries are also red flags. An honest individual who is dealing in good faith will tend to reveal the commonplace facts that define his or her identity whereas a fake individual will tend to avoid or evade or become uncomfortable when inquired about his or her fake identity. The same, urgency to act, to engage, to trust on something, before you have time to check it out is also a pattern to observe, as those who wish to defraud usually attempt to hurry their targets along before they can even bother to check. And of course, any demand on money on the part of a person whom you have not duly identified should raise some special suspicion, because money demand is the main focus of a very large number of frauds.

The skill that is underlying is to learn to take these cues as reasons to take action and not as reasons to doubt. Some suspect there is something wrong but talk themselves out of it, as they do not want to appear suspicious or paranoid, and get themselves in trouble. A better answer is to regard a valid red flag as the very moment when validation is actually worthwhile, when you make the little effort of ensuring that you are dealing with someone before the situation escalates further. Relied on your instincts so far as to look into them, when they give warning, is one of the safest of all the habits that a man may bring into the world with him, where he is a stranger.

The bottom line

The world we inhabit is more connected to strangers than ever before and, though this openness is one of the most terrific gifts of modern life, it also opens the possibility of deceit, since online identity is to be faked with an amazing ease. Checking, making sure that someone is who he says he is, has now become a crucial skill in surviving this world safely, not as a demonstration of paranoia but as a kind of judgement: of recognising when the stakes are high enough to make it worth checking them one has the means to do so. The instances that require the verification process are those where a false sense of security means the most, the face-to-face, a major deal, a venture into serious matters, or whenever something seems suspicious. And the means to check, whether it is by address and phone searches, or by pictures or name, have become truly available, allowing laymen to make identifications where none was previously possible. When intelligently applied to alert your judgment, aimed at self-preservation, and in the service of assured openness, as opposed to the threat of suspicion, verification will allow you to reap the benefits of the connected world without bearing the risks of it. The interconnected world compels us to have faith in unknown people all the time, and such faith is rewarded most of the time, yet the few that are willing to be abused by it constitute a minor fraction that makes it worthwhile to be able to confirm that truly. When it comes to dealing with strangers, knowing who you really are dealing with when it counts is nothing but prudence, and it is a prudence that is now accessible to everyone.