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Stripe Identity

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Re: Stripe Identity

#181
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chat apps use Identity to verify bots and prevent bad bots from spamming real users. And shipping services use Identity when a user is suspected as a fraudster—to double check before creating fraudulent shipping labels.

> Chat apps use Identity to verify bots and prevent bad bots from spamming real users. Is bot spam rampant on discord or something? Are less invasive forms of verification (eg. SMS, credit card, or requiring a deposit) not enough? Can it not be solved via technical means? eg. requiring users to opt-in before receiving messages from a bot? > And shipping services use Identity when a user is suspected as a fraudster—to…

>Is bot spam rampant on discord or something?

It definitely is. If you don't turn off DMs from all the public servers you're in you'll inevitably be hit with the crypto spam bots.

There's also the issue of bots silently sitting on servers and logging all chats, user statuses, etc.

Re: Stripe Identity

#182
post #118
post #99

The landing page contains logos for clubhouse, discord, and shippo, which are presumably companies use the service. Does anyone find those usages to be unnecessarily intrusive? Maybe it's just me, but a chat app or shipping site asking me for a drivers license scan + selfie would make me never want to use the service again. It's appalling how this sort of stuff is getting normalized, eg. google asking for id scans fo…

Regular Discord users don't need to send in anything. It's used to verify your bot (only applicable for bots that are in more than 75 servers), which seems like a reasonable use case.

More a requirement at this point. Discord had to crack down on malicious bot developers after some decided to log essentially every bit of information ever sent to them to be put on the internet, including information from private channels. Some scopes require this verification outright now.

Re: Stripe Identity

#183
> Access captured images of ID documents and selfies

Why is this necessary? I thought the point was to trust Stripe with this data instead of many small companies which could abuse the data

Re: Stripe Identity

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just what I was thinking. Can Stripe hurry up and go public so I can buy some shares?

While that sounds like a great ... in all likelihood by the time it hits the public market most if not all the value will be extracted by the investors. With a branded company like this and equity markets as frothy as they are. I doubt there will be much value left for retail. Hopefully Im wrong though.

I always hear this line of thinking, but there aren’t ever supporting examples presented. Stripe reminds me of Cloudflare. Cloudflare is over 5x what it was at IPO (as of 6/14/21). Maybe what you describe is the case “on average” for most IPOs, but it seems to not be the case for extraordinary companies like Cloudflare (and maybe Stripe). Obviously just an n of 1 but I’m sure others could chime in with similar examples.

Re: Stripe Identity

#185

The pricing link on the top doesn't refer to any pricing section on the page. Is it missing? Edit: This seems to be an internationalization problem. I am from India. The pricing section for Indian page https://stripe.com/en-in/identity#pricing is missing so the link doesn't work.

For anyone looking for the answer, in the US it's $1.50 / ID verification and $0.50 for Social Security Number lookup (an American tax number that is officially not for identity purposes but used that way all the time).

I'll give my SSN to a healthcare provider, and maybe a bank. Random vendor using Stripe? Probably not.

Edit: to be a little less flippant, what is an example of a Stripe user to whom you would be comfortable giving your SSN?

Re: Stripe Identity

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a whole different user flow -- you leave the notification to enter a separate system of controls with esoteric commands, over just typing what you want to happen.. "Stop" - forever until I want you back "Stop this week" - self-explanatory "Not during work hours" - also ^ "Consolidate weekly" - get a digest "I don't care" - make better suggestions So many contextual pieces to make better notifications…

Texting "stop this week" will stop SMSes from that number forever because of the STOP keyword. I've never seen any SMS system that would correctly interpret and adjust to things like "not during work hours" or "consolidate weekly" responses.

> I've never seen any SMS system that would correctly interpret and adjust to things like "not during work hours" or "consolidate weekly" responses.

I know!! I built a stupid simple bot for myself that just reminds me of things I want in SMS form... I text it things like 'For tomorrow - x, y, z' and then 9am the next day it messages with what's behind '-'...

There's a bit of configuration the first time you text the bot, for timezones and things like what does tomorrow afternoon mean to me? 2pm or 3pm? If multiple 'tomorrow afternoons come' do you want that as a digest or just individually, or w/e.

But for me, I love it because I forget things so quickly, so as I quickly as I can send a text, I can get reminded at an appropriate time. (and yes, I hate reminder apps.)

I'm still struggling how to keep it 'safe' - because Twilio keeps all the message data in plain text (more a byproduct of SMS) and holds a record of it, so while I can encrypt the db entries, I'm not sure how to make it 'secure' for other folks yet.

Re: Stripe Identity

#187
post #2

I've never seen a company release incredible products with as high velocity as Stripe has over the last few years. Truly incredible. $1.50/user may sound outrageously expensive at first, but having seen all the engineering power it takes to build something like this at Uber...it's a totally fair price.

I'd put Twilio and Cloudflare in the same category for vision (expanding product offering) and execution.

Re: Stripe Identity

#188
post #118
post #99

The landing page contains logos for clubhouse, discord, and shippo, which are presumably companies use the service. Does anyone find those usages to be unnecessarily intrusive? Maybe it's just me, but a chat app or shipping site asking me for a drivers license scan + selfie would make me never want to use the service again. It's appalling how this sort of stuff is getting normalized, eg. google asking for id scans fo…

Regular Discord users don't need to send in anything. It's used to verify your bot (only applicable for bots that are in more than 75 servers), which seems like a reasonable use case.

Does Discord only allow bot developers from Stripe Identity's supported countries to verify? Stripe is only supported in 44 countries[1], and Stripe Identity seems to support 56 (by counting options in the select dropdown in [2]), so that leaves out a lot of countries.

[1] https://stripe.com/global

[2] https://stripe.com/docs/acceptable-verification-documents

Re: Stripe Identity

#189

Does Stripe intend to make a giant online database of international identity documents? Why should we trust Stripe to secure these? It could be Equifax levels of problematic if there would be a intrusion, but I also can't tell how Stripe plans to use this information.

These databases already exist. For example, all driver's licenses issued in a state are part of the public record, and many companies already maintain databases of them. For example, you can sign up for an account with the NY DMV that allows you to search all DMV records, as long as your use falls within one of a dozen permissible use-cases (including "To verify the accuracy of information submitted by the individual to the business"). Identity documents are designed to be verifiable, which in this case generally precludes them from being secret

Re: Stripe Identity

#190

I really despise this trend of uploading your ID and a selfie for verification. I know it makes sense in some legal frameworks, but beyond that I find it invasive and risky (and rude.)

It’s not really a “trend”—if you think about it, ID verification is already required when checking into hotels, buying alcohol, or when visiting a bank teller. As more commerce moves online, Stripe Identity was built to significantly reduce the number of organizations and humans that would touch your ID—in a faster, secure way that’s hosted by Stripe ( https://support.stripe.com/questions/common-questions-about-... )…

> It’s not really a “trend”

> As more commerce moves online

It is very much a trend and that is very much what you are describing. The problem with identity verification is

a) Business that have no business requesting them do so. Linkedin, Google, Facebook does this when they suspect you are a bot. But if you have been a long time user, they hold your account with your personal data as hostage. You cannot delete your account if you object to providing your official documents.

b) There is very little legal protection if companies (not saying Stripe will) use your official documents to build an extremely detail online profile of you. Its all based on trusting what these companies say.

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