In the tech world, phone numbers are being evaluated as a potential future form of unique user identification.
A recent article on The Next Web, part of a series titled called Future of Communications, looks at this new way of identifying users.
As we’ve seen in the past, anyone from scam artists to film teams can easily create a fake online profile.
Email accounts tend to be the simplest to fake, since there are no identity verification processes required upon creation.
One user could create hundreds of free email accounts, which could then be used to send annoying spam messages or create false social media profiles.
However this article argues that using phone numbers as a form of identification provides a variety of safeguards.
Some applications are already starting to use phone numbers as a means of verifying a user’s identity.
Companies like Airbnb awards users with a “Verified ID” badge after providing a government-issued ID, email address, phone number, and link to an active social network profile.
We also recently saw that Tinder put in place mobile identity software from TeleSign, that sends an SMS verification code to potentially fraudulent customers, to check the person is who they say they are.
Tinder says this cut spam traffic by 90%.
Check out the article here.