EP13: Identity and Web3 with Jeffrey Schwartz CEO and Founder of Dentity

Unlock the full potential of your digital identity with guidance from Jeffrey Schwartz, founder and CEO of Dentity. Together, we unravel Web3's promise of consumer empowerment and ownership over one's digital presence. Gone are the days of big tech monopolizing your online identity—learn how the decentralized nature of Web3 can hand back control, allowing you to express yourself more authentically and secure your personal data from the fragmented dangers of the internet's original design flaws.

Dive into the brave new world of digital identity verification where your privacy is paramount, and you're at the helm. Jeffrey uncovers the power of secure, cloud-based wallets and sophisticated verification processes that mark a seismic shift away from big tech's grasp. With the imminent obsolescence of cookies and increased app tracking transparency, we explore the changing face of digital marketing and how it impacts your online footprint. This episode is a beacon for all seeking to navigate the evolving digital landscape with confidence, ensuring their private information remains just that—private.

Finally, we address the pressing need for verified digital identities and their role in fostering a safer internet ecosystem. Through the lens of AARP's investment in Dentity and the scourge of online scams, we stress the importance of collective responsibility in establishing trust online. Join us as we paint a vision of a future where verified identities are the norm, empowering consumers and protecting against the maladies of the digital age. This isn't just a conversation—it's a movement towards a more secure, trustworthy, and empowered digital society.

About Jeffrey Schwartz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-alan-schwartz/

Build Trust Online with Dentity
https://www.dentity.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Welcome to Tech Travels hosted by the seasoned tech enthusiast and industry expert, steve Woodard. With over 25 years of experience and a track record of collaborating with the brightest minds in technology, steve is your seasoned guide through the ever-evolving world of innovation. Join us as we embark on an insightful journey, exploring the past, present and future of tech under Steve's expert guidance.

Speaker 3: 1:04

Welcome back, fellow travelers. On today's episode we're going to dive into the topic of identity and Web3 and its impact to customers and why they really need to understand what digital identity is and also help us understand really kind of what it's all about. Today we're thrilled to have Jeffrey Schwartz. Jeffrey is the founder of CE and the CEO of Density, a company dedicated to helping customers build trust online through streamlined and reusable identity verification solutions. Jeff has a rich history of working with multiple public companies and has extensive experience in launching startups and brings a wealth of knowledge to our discussion today. He's also served on various public and charitable boards and has been an Aspen Institute Fellow for over two decades. Jeffrey also holds a doctorate from the University of Southern California, which is based in Los Angeles. Jeffrey, it's great to have you on the show today, Welcome.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Thank you, Steve. After that introduction, I can only disappoint you. That was very interesting. I thank you for being so kind to me. Usually people aren't so kind to me.

Speaker 3: 2:11

I really wanted to take our audience on this topic around identity, and who better than somebody who is a CEO of a company who specifically works in this space so to really kind of help our listeners, just kind of give us a real kind of foundational understanding of really what. In simple terms, what is Web3 identity and how does it really typically differ from just the traditional type of identities that are managed by the big tech companies?

Speaker 1: 2:39

So there's a couple of questions there. The first question is what is identity? And I think the second question is what is Web3? So let's take the first question. So the first question what is identity?

Speaker 1: 2:52

The one point I want to make to your listeners is that identity is a more encompassing term and it doesn't mean you're identifiers. So most people think of identity and they say, well, it's my name, rank and serial number, it's my digits on my license card, I bank here, I give to all these different charitable organizations and they have credentials that say that I'm a donor. And so I think of identity as a more expressive term. Right, I mean, certainly we do ID verification, which is about your identifiers who are you and are you a real person, are you human and what's your driver's license number or your passport number? In fact we do. I think we do over 16000 documents now in 200 countries. So we do that, we do identifiers. But we also work with a number of companies that that issue credentials for membership, like the National Notary Association, for example. So I just want to level set the term identity versus identifiers, and when I say identity, I mean a kind of a more expressive identity, a more encompassing term. So that's question one.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Question two is what is Web3? And I'm also out there talking about Web5, right, which is even more confusing. So what I'll do is give a general comment about Web3 and talk to you about why am I interested in this subject and all the new technology. So Web3 is this idea that you can own things that previously were owned by the companies that you registered for. So you can own the money, you can own the identity. You have a decentralized interest in things that previously were stuck in what we call a Web 2 database, right? So if Web 1 was about reading things on the Internet and Web 2 was about writing things on the Internet, like social media comments and whatnot, web 3 is about owning things. It's fundamentally about owning things, and the reason why it's so interesting when it relates to identity is that we don't own our identity.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Let's face it right. Facebook, google, you know Yahoo or you know Apple all these companies own your identity. So when you go to log in, steve, you know you typically will log in. You know we call it federated login. So you're logging in with Facebook or you're logging in with Google, right? So you don't. They aren't referencing. You know we call it federated login. So you're logging in with Facebook or you're logging in with Google, right? So you don't they aren't referencing you know anything that you own Right To to to pull down the identity. They're going, you know, google owns that identity, it's Google's identity. Now, your name is there, but Google owns it, right, and so it's very, it's very troubling, and it really has been.

Speaker 1: 6:04

You know, I'm going to, I'm going to back up, I'm going to back up all the way to the beginning of the Internet, right, and this is how I like to tell the story. When the Internet was created, steve, it was created. I call it the original sin, right? There's two, actually two original sins. The first original sin is that it was there was no identity created. The second original sin is that there was no money created, right? So let's deal with identity. So the internet was created to connect a bunch of anonymous computers to each other, and that's what it does, right? You know TCP, ip protocol. So it basically has been built around connecting anonymous machines into a network.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Okay, so the reason you have 350 passwords, right, or more probably have 500. But the typical person has 350. The reason you have 350 passwords is that every place you log in. Every website, every service, has had to create its own identity layer, right? And so you have. You know your name and your digits, right, and your email address, and so you have.

Speaker 1: 7:05

You know your name and your digits, right, your email address and, in some cases, a lot of personal information in 350 databases, right, the attack surface is so incredibly large and that's why we have, you know, 3 billion identities for sale on the dark web.

Speaker 1: 7:19

That's that has fueled the problem of identity theft, right, it's.

Speaker 1: 7:24

You know, your identity is everywhere.

Speaker 1: 7:26

It's everywhere, right, so what we're trying to do, right, is give rightful ownership of that identity back to the consumer, and there's been all these new standards, all these new protocols I'm not going to go into detail, but there's all these new things that have happened that allow you, today, to own your identity and your identifiers in a wallet that is secure, right, you know, using cryptography, they can be verified anywhere, anytime, anyplace, and so this is an incredible renaissance for consumers, right, it's an incredibly exciting time, and the thing that follows this, steve, is that your personal information has value, all that information that you give to all these different companies, right, they make billions of dollars on your information right.

Speaker 1: 8:17

So this trend of you know Web3, owning your information, and then you know it's all stored in a wallet I'm not going to confuse people with a wallet but you own it and then at some point you're the rightful owner of that data and you should be able to make money on it, right, and you shouldn't. You know Google and Apple and all these other companies. They shouldn't make money on your data, you shouldn't. So that's where this is headed. That was a long answer, I'm sorry, steve.

Speaker 3: 8:49

No, it was really great because it really kind of expands the fact that there's definitely a differentiation when it comes to talking about identity and then talking about identity within Web 3. And then even I think you had mentioned kind of Web 5, which I think kind of blows my mind, because here I am stuck on Web 3. I had no idea there's a Web 5. So let me just make I'm stuck on Web3. I had no idea there was a.

Speaker 1: 9:04

Web5. So let me just make can I just make one comment about Web3, web5? So Web3 really has been overrun with crypto and coins and NFT, right. So when people think of Web3, they think of all that financialization, right. So we've come up a whole bunch of people have come up with this term Web5, web2 plus Web3, web2 plus Web3 equals Web5. And Web5 is only dedicated to. What is that? And that's the opportunity you have to say it's about consumer control, consumer-owned personal data, and it's not about coins or crypto or NFTs. It's about you and your data, your relationship to that data.

Speaker 3: 9:56

Do you think that the concept of Web3 has kind of become almost overused, in the sense that we tend to almost kind of almost now, almost synonymously, just kind of just blank out when we hear Web3. Is it just that there's just too much frenzy going on with things like cryptos and tokens and things like that and not enough focus on identity? You're saying it tends to be more of crypto and NFTs and gamification than identity.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Yeah, I think that's right. You know. The one thing that I'll tell you is that I use the Web3 often, but you also know that I use Web5 because you're in my Web5 LinkedIn group. So the thing you have to do when you say Web to explain, you have to hack your way through crypto coins, nfts, and then you get to this promised land where you can talk about a consumer's relationship with their personal information ownership and relationship with it. The beauty of Web5 is nobody knows what the hell Web5 is, so you get to start from zero, steve, and you get to say okay, this is a cool opportunity. Web5 is only about the consumer.

Speaker 3: 11:10

It's incredible. I mean, it really kind of does bring in the whole idea around, kind of the holistic, you know, the idea of self-sovereign the data and permissions are fully controlled by the individual identity and I guess the idea would be is that users really control it. And I think, if I kind of encapsulate the philosophy, is that, you know, the users can really kind of port their data across different segments of applications and then things can selectively kind of disclose information about themselves to whoever they want to at, whenever they want to, right. So it is full data sovereignty, yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Yeah, I mean, you know, as I said, I know some of your audience isn't overly technical, so I'm not going to talk about zero knowledge, proofs and credentials and all this verifiable presentations and whatnot. But the beauty of the new technology is that it allows you to prove things about yourself without disclosing a bunch of information. So like, for example, let's talk about the physical identity system. Okay, let's just start there, because the physical identity system, this identity system that we all live in, the physical world, so the DMV issues you, they're the issuer of the driver's license, okay, you're the holder of the driver's license. And then when you go to buy a beer or a pack of cigarettes, you present your driver's license to the verifier, right? So holder, issuer, verifier, so it's a triangle, right, and the verifier looks at the license and says, oh, this is issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles. I trust it, right.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Now the reality is is that you know, with all this new tech and AI, you don't know that you can trust it right, because who knows right?

Speaker 1: 12:49

So that physical identity system, that triangle, basically, is the system that we use in this new data model, this new consumer data model. There are issuers of credentials, there are holders of credentials and there are verifiers, relying parties, verifiers of credentials system is that a verifiable credential is not verifiable in the sense that I could issue you a verifiable credential, steve, that says you're six foot five, right, but you're not six foot five. I mean, maybe you are because you're sitting down, but you're not six foot five. So I haven't verified that you're six foot five. I've just put it into a credential which can be cryptographically verified using blockchain and other technology. So the beauty of this new system is that the data should be irrelevant. I could give all my data to everybody on the internet, but what's relevant is the verification of the data. So that's where we're hopefully going to get to to is a world where the data is sort of meaningless. It's the verification of the data that becomes important.

Speaker 3: 14:03

Now walk me through a little bit of understanding. How do we actually verify the entity? Are we leveraging something like a smart contract or leveraging things such as blockchain? I mean, when you say kind of of, how does that actually kind of work?

Speaker 1: 14:19

Right, okay, so let's start at the very beginning. Okay, so we do a lot of identity verification. Okay, we can verify 16,000 different documents in almost every country, okay, and different documents in almost every country. So we have a very smart system that looks at the physical document, does all this analysis on the physical document. You put some information in your date of birth, we do some analysis. Then what we do is we have a very sophisticated system that proves that you're human and alive a video system and that it also proves that you're human and alive a video system and that it also proves that you are the person represented on the government-issued ID.

Speaker 1: 15:00

And if that checks out, that process typically takes about a minute and a half, and consumers are familiar with it. They've gone through it a million times now. So the beauty of it is that typically, steve, the consumer's relationship with that data is they have no more relationship with that data. That data then goes and sits in a database, right, which gives you zero value. You can never, ever use that data again, and so what you have to then do, right, is you have to keep verifying and verifying your information everywhere you go. Right? Uber just launched a rider verification, you know Airbnb, you know Meta, you know it's going to be insanity because there's going to be a hundred different verification, every platform, right. So that makes no sense because all we're doing is we're just recreating the system that we're trying to, the problem we're trying to solve, which is there's too much information out there. So the system that we have, right, basically creates what's called a verifiable credential. It sits in the consumer's wallet and the consumer doesn't even necessarily know that they have this wallet, but it's this really cool Web3 wallet that's up in the cloud and they have a key pair and then they have to unlock the other key pair up on the cloud. But don't get hung up on that, because the consumer doesn't even really interact with their wallet that much. So that credential, that identity credential, now can be reused anywhere, anywhere. So, because it uses open identity standards, anybody that wants to integrate maybe three to five lines of code onto a webpage can verify that credential and the act of verification.

Speaker 1: 16:43

Basically, there's a few parts here. So the very first thing we do, steve, is we make sure that you, we authenticate you and make sure that you have a wallet, and we do that through a phone number and what's called the OTP one-time password. So we authenticate you as the rightful owner of a wallet. And then what we do is we say, ah, we want to look for the identity credential, we want to look for the identity credential. So then the identity credential is presented, right, and let's say that there's 10 attributes of data on that credential. Right, you know your height, all this other kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 17:21

Well, you, the user, now have control. Right To say you know what? I don't want this website to have all this information. So you now can go through and control what information you're giving to that website. So it's very different. In that example I gave you, steve, all you have to do is prove you're 21. They don't need to know your birthday, they don't need to know where you live, they don't need to know the color of your eyes or how tall you are or how much you weigh. So we're massively oversharing information. So this new system of digital identity basically allows you to prove things about yourself without spraying your data across the internet. Right, and that's why it's privacy protective, it's secure and that's why the system is, you know, has been adopted by, you know, all the big companies.

Speaker 3: 18:13

Yeah, and yeah, I mean, yeah, it does. I mean really, I mean, when you kind of use the analogy like you did, I mean you know talking about, you know driver's license, I think that they most people can really understand that concept. And one thing that I really I really trying to understand is really kind of around the role of centralization and decentralization. I think the shift into kind of more of the Web3, identity-based, where the individual user has sovereignty over the data and the information they choose to share, can be very selective. When you kind of look at some of the business models around some of the big tech companies, it seems like they would probably almost kind of find either what are you seeing in terms of kind of either they're either adapting to this new change and fundamental philosophical shift into identity, Because it seems like they kind of own all the data, they own all the ability to kind of share that data. It seems like they would almost be a power struggle over retaining that at some point.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Right, yeah, no, there is right, there is and consumers know that app tracking right, you have the ability to not have the apps track you, right. So that's been a big hit to big tech companies. And the other big hit is happening right now and the cookie. You know the cookie. That is, that you know cookies, you, and follows you around and you know, says, you know, hey, you know like you were looking at these sunglasses everywhere you go. Now you have to look at those sunglasses. It's annoying and that's not what happens in the physical world.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Imagine going into a store and then you look at a shirt and then you go to the next door and then the sales guy comes with that shirt next door and he's banging on the window saying, how about this shirt? It makes no sense. So that whole system, ultimately, is going away. So Google is deprecating the cookie, right? So the cookie will go away and web marketers are going to basically have to rely on the information it's called zero party data and first party data, the information that you give them with permission to use, right? So this is fundamentally a sea. You know, a sea change, right in a sea change. So the big tech companies by the way, don't worry about the big tech companies. They'll be fine, I'm not worried about them. They'll get access to your information. Um, just, you know they'll ask you for it, right? Basically, what they'll do is they'll say hey, in order to use facebook, which is a free service, you have to give us all this information, right, right, and you know so. The next big wave here is lots of companies asking you for your data that previously were just taking your data, right? So this is going to be the new trend. They're going to be asking you for your data, and you can choose to give it to them or not give it to them, but the thing I'll tell you is that they may choose to not allow you to use some of their services if you don't give them your data. So this will be the next big fight as it relates to centralization versus decentralization.

Speaker 1: 21:07

All this data for 20 years, 30 years, it's just been sitting up in their databases. And what happens? Steve, you're a DevOps guy. You know this better than anybody. What happens to that data? What always happens to that data? No, no, no, it gets hacked. Right, it gets hacked. Of course, there's billions of records for sale, right? It's because those data records are not secure? They're not secure, I don't care what you know, you could put them in Fort Knox, there's always going to be somebody that can figure out a way to get that data.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Now, the beauty of the new decentralized method of data storage right versus the centralized method of data storage is that in order for the bad guys to get you know the, the, the personal information of a million users, they have to crack a million different wallets, right, and you know, we use what's called AES 256 encryption, right, which is the same encryption standard that the department of defense uses for top secret information. You know, according to Microsoft and the department of Defense, it would take you 100 years to crack that code. Okay, so you're gonna, you're gonna crack. You know you're gonna. It's gonna take you 100 years to crack the code of a million wallets. Have fun, right, go at it, right. So my point is is that the, the method of storage in the new, in the new, in the new ecosystem, this decentralized ecosystem, is far more protective than centralized data storage, right, and so that's the benefit to the consumer they're going to have more security over their information.

Speaker 3: 22:49

It definitely does present some real key features when it comes to things like privacy, security and enhancement of protecting that identity. Where I might see a little bit of a struggle is the average, normal, everyday consumer understanding how they can then kind of go about obtaining a wallet. It seems like it really tends to be. It favors more of the people who tend to be tech savvy. How do we start to see the landscape shifting in terms of wider adoption, with more awareness, understanding of how the wallet works, with easier interoperability?

Speaker 1: 23:20

So this is what we're focused on and this is the genius of identity. So the consumer doesn't want another wallet. I mean, they don't want another wallet. They've got their Apple wallet, google wallet. So what you have to do is abstract all this technology a Web3 wallet, asymmetric cryptography, the blockchain. You know, people don't wake up in the morning and say I want to be decentralized. Today, steve, they say I want to sell something on Facebook, or I want to buy something on Craigslist, or I have somebody coming over to walk my dog and I'm concerned that. You know, I want to know who they are. Those are the things, those are the everyday problems that people want to solve. Right, and Web3 tech is brilliant at solving them.

Speaker 1: 24:01

Right Now, the problem is, is that you know and this is no offense to you because you're a technologist is that technologists think it's a technology problem? It's not a technology problem, it's a user adoption problem, right, and so what? We're focused on identity. I mean we have brilliant tech and many, many patents. Brilliant tech. You know a dozen engineers working on open identity standards for three years. Right, it's a very simple user interface and workflow to the consumer, and the reality is 90% of the consumers don't even know they have a wallet, because we don't call it a wallet. It's just this place where you have access to your credentials, you can reference them and unlock them by using your phone number and consumer may never even go to their identity wallet. In fact, we don't even call it a wallet anymore. And you know what? We don't even call all these little things credentials anymore. We call them passes, because people are used to passes, right, they have passes in their Apple wallet, right? So part of it is that we, as technology people, right, we're so obsessed with the technology. We basically, you know we smoke what we roll, right? So you know, we have to get off that. And, by the way, you know, it took us a long.

Speaker 1: 25:26

You know, we've been around for three years, right, this is our third version. We just launched a big, you know user interface update and we were hammering the wallet for three years. We thought the wallet was the most important thing. It was featured in all the apps and everything. We don't even. It's gone. Now the wallet is gone, right, like you know, do away with the wallet. Consumers don't want another wallet, in my view, right, and they tell us this like they don't want another wallet. You know, what do they need another wallet for they don't have any use for the wallet.

Speaker 3: 25:57

So it seems like you guys are kind of abstracting you know, kind of extracting you know kind of more of the technical hurdles that most people would tend to go to to get kind of a Web3 identity and making it more as an easy to kind of you know, identity as a service where users or consumers can simply say, look, I want a centralized place that has all of the bells and whistles that be able to kind of gives me all the technical features but I don't understand, and really just kind of presents it to me in an easy to use interface, right Cause you know it's you know having to learn these things.

Speaker 3: 26:27

Yeah, it's very difficult.

Speaker 1: 26:29

No, that's exactly, you got it exactly right. And what I will tell you about DENITY is we have 85 year old, you know, grandmothers that get through this process every single day, like it's an. It's incredible to me, right? It's incredible to me that people you know that aren't digital natives, right Are are getting through the most complicated technology ever. Like. Our technology is like world-class, world-class ID tech, world-class right, and 85-year-old, you know grandmothers can get through our system no problem, in two minutes, by the way it takes.

Speaker 3: 27:00

Yeah, I was going to say the baby boomers that are basically kind of near retirement right is like you know. They're now kind of being washed in this new technical world right of identity and Web3. And you know even some things you know that might be kind of a limitation to them in terms of the understanding is just as frightening, I think, in some aspects. So it's great that you've been able to do that and it's amazing that you said you mentioned the 85 year old is able to kind of do this and do this with ease. I'd love to see this on a mass adoption level kind of increase. Where do you start to kind of where do you see the next five years happening? I don't want to say five to 10, but where do you kind of see consumers kind of meeting and where do you see this consumer push in the next five years?

Speaker 1: 27:43

Where do you see this consumer push in the next five years? Right? So my focus is on adoption and my focus is solving real-world problems, not very niche Web3 problems. So let me give you an example. A big investor in our company is AARP. They have 38 million members. Steve. Aarp has more members than crypto holders in the US. This is massive, right. So they invested in Dentity because they're concerned and focused on elder financial crime and abuse, romance scams, things like this, and they understand that identity is the through line.

Speaker 1: 28:17

If you can't figure out a way to get identity in the hands of consumers and for them to be able to exchange it and make it social and make it social right, then it's useless. Right? Because, look, you're never going to get a billion people verified right by relying on Facebook and Google and all the big tech. You just won't. And there's a couple of reasons why. First, it's not in their interests, right? You know they have business models. You know they don't want to verify every single person that onboards into their system. They just don't. That's not their business model. I mean, you may have heard the same stat, but I always hear the stat that 80% of the ads on TikTok are consumed by bots, by technology. So, 80% of every ad that you serve on TikTok, if you're an advertiser publisher, it's being seen by a bot, right? So that just tells you the size and scale of the problem, right? And AI presents all these incredible challenges about identity, right? You know deep fakes and all this other stuff, right?

Speaker 1: 29:20

So the thing that we have to focus on is finding use cases. We call them use cases. We're finding problems that are real problems that vex consumers, and then using our tech to solve them. I'll give you an example we have an exclusive relationship with the largest Facebook marketplace sellers group. There's 20,000 sellers in this group 20,000. And we are working every day, right, to work with the sellers to get them to understand how you you know, how you verify people, how you build counterparty trust, and this is like you know, I always say that it's. You know, if you want to create a network, it's better to easier to create a network in a classroom than it is in a football field, right? And have you know? We have, um, we have. You know hundreds uh, I mean because we just started this relationship but hundreds of people in that, in that group, that are verifying each other, verifying buyers right, and it'll it'll disperse out that way.

Speaker 1: 30:17

So the way this the way this rolls out, steve is, you know is for us to solve real world problems that consumers actually care about. Do it without putting the technology front and center and not making it Web3 or saying it's blockchain or a credential, and just giving consumers access to all this technology and then, over time, it spreads. So the one thing that I would also tell you is that you know to my previous point, you know, consumers they have the lowest trust ever in all these big tech and social media. 80% of consumers today don't trust social media with their data. They just don't right. So they're not going to give more of their personal data to the social media giants and big tech. They just won't right, they just won't.

Speaker 1: 31:04

So the best way to do this is to make it decentralized, to make every consumer basically verify a relying party and do it to each other, because then you have millions and millions and millions of people, billions of people verifying each other. Then it just spreads, right? We don't have to sit in line and queue up to get our identity verified by Meta or Facebook. You know, and, by the way, you know, if you do that you have. It's of zero value to you. You know it's sitting up in their database, Like what good is that? You know you can't use it. You can't use it and you're going to pay $15 a month to have a little blue check mark that you. You know that. That that and then, by the way, you have to then go to every, every single platform you go to. You have to do it again. It's useless. So reusable reusable digital identity owned by the consumer, controlled by the consumer more privacy, protect, protective. They decide what information they give to to whom, and it's safer. It's safer than putting it in a centralized database.

Speaker 3: 32:02

Yeah, and and and and that's. I think it's incredibly powerful. Is that? You know, is that the idea of you know, having everything decentralized? You know the reducing the surface attack of reducing it now to basically now millions of identities. You now have to attack a million different type of individuals versus just one individual type of place. It's incredible. I think it's very, very empowering for users and I highly advocate for our listeners to go out there check out what Jeff's working with at Density. Jeff, how can our listeners understand more around what Density is doing and how we can protect them? Give us a little bit of idea of, kind of like, some of the things that Density can really help them with. How can they get involved?

Speaker 1: 32:45

Well, first of all, identity is free to the consumer. So go to a identity D, e, n, t, I, t Ycom, just like identity without the I identitycom and sign up. It'll take you two minutes and you know your information will be safe and secure. Then then go into the app. It's a web app, which means that you're not going to find it in the app star, it's on the internet. Then go into your identity account and start verifying people, right, like you know, we have a point system and all this other fun kind of gamification and all this other fun stuff. But go in and start verifying. You know people Get comfortable, get comfortable sending verification requests. You know it's super easy to do by email or SMS. Then what I would say is you know it's super easy to do by email or SMS. Then what I would say is you know I have service providers coming to my home all the time. You know people working domestically in the house and you know, in the yard I don't let a single person on my property without verifying their identity. Period hands down.

Speaker 1: 33:37

You know there's a lot of bad people out there, steve, a lot of bad people. You know we see them every day, bad people trying to do bad things to good people, and they will, and they want to do it. You know, getting a fake identity, right, um so, um, so, you know, uh, uh, what I would say is like, anytime, you know, anytime you're trying to create trust with somebody remotely or online, send them a verification request. Right, and you know, in my experience of doing this for a few years, if they don't do that, if they don't accept it, you know, beware, beware. Just have your eyes wide open, because a lot of times, the bad people you know and you see, have you ever posted something lately on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace? It's you. Get over, it's insane, steve. Do it, just so you understand the magnitude of the problem. Right, do it. I ask you to do it. It is.

Speaker 1: 34:33

You will get overrun instantly with 25 requests for your Zelle account, your phone number, your PayPal account and there's all these scams out there, right, there's bad people and, by the way, it's not domestic anymore, it's completely internationalizedized and the problem is that you have all these federal agents. These people are doing it basically in plain daylight out in Southeast Asia and Northern Africa and all these other places. They can't stop them and they're coming after you. They're coming after your mom and they're coming after your grandfather and they're coming after you. They're trying to steal your information and they're going to scam the shit out of you. They're going to take your money and they're going to steal your identity, and it's bad. So just be aware there's bad people out there, and I'm not even talking about all the bad stuff that happens to women and children and minorities.

Speaker 1: 35:21

And do you know that there was 21 million reported cases to the National Center for Missing and Abused Children, and a lot of those cases now are online grooming, like huge more than half of them it's online. It's bad people trying to groom, you know, young kids online. It's disgusting. And so we all this is my pitch here now, Steve, we all have a role here. We all have to, steve, we all have a role here. We all have to stand up. We all have to stand up for identity, verified identity, together. Right, it's free, it takes two minutes. Right, we all have to stand up for it. Otherwise, you know, particularly with AI otherwise it's just going to continue to get worse, you know, and all the trust that we're trying to build online and all this digital commerce stuff that we do, it's all going to go to shit, because trust is the essence of commerce. Without trust, there is no commerce.

Speaker 3: 36:11

Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I think the key takeaway there is that consumers have to get involved. They've got to get engaged with basically getting an identity that they can then verify through something like Dentity and then start basically reaching out to people to join their network and get verified. That way, I think, kind of as people start to get on board with that, you start to see that adoption curve go up. I think that's a win-win for consumers and for entities as well too. Wow, that's incredible stuff, jeff.

Speaker 1: 36:38

I can't yeah like if you I mean it's powerful, right, Steve? Like, if you want to bitch about, you know hate speech and all, and you want to bitch about identity theft and you want to bitch about a lack of civility, you know, on social media, if you want to bitch about all these things, and you know online consumer scams and you know financial, if you want to bitch about it, you have a responsibility to stand up and do something. And you know we've been doing this three years now and you know we'll have millions of people on the app. You know, using the system and this, by the way, we haven't made a single pity. We don't charge consumers, right, and we charge businesses, right. You know we have hundreds of businesses that use it. We charge them.

Speaker 1: 37:16

But my point is is that this is a mission-driven company, right? And consumers if they want to complain about all the malignancies and bad shit that happens on the internet, then they have a responsibility to do something right. And finally, now you can do something Create virality around verified identity, right, if everybody's verified, steve, people say bad things with their username. They don't say it with their name, they just don identity right, like, if everybody's verified, steve, you know people say bad things with their username. They don't say it with their name, they just don't right. So all these bad people doing bad stuff on the internet, ultimately this stuff will go away because they're you know, they hide, they're cowards, right, they're cowards.

Speaker 3: 37:56

It's taken away the anonymity of it, right, they're no longer hiding behind just a ghost username. It's now it's kind of like you know your identity can be verified. So you need to really be you know, really need to kind of hone in on just the identities that are verified. So it seems like that's kind of the powerful takeaway is moving into kind of an environment or kind of an ecosystem where everyone's identified, everyone's verified and everyone then can. You can't hide anymore. Very, very powerful stuff. It's amazing, jeff. What are some of?

Speaker 1: 38:30

the projects you're working on. Where can we follow you? Yeah, well, I'm not a big social media guy I think you probably know that but I am very active on LinkedIn, so follow me on LinkedIn. I'm always publishing and Steve is always jumping in and jumping in on my posts, which is great. I love that. So follow me on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 38:48

But, you know, I'll give you just a bunch of examples of this kind of stuff we're doing. So if you're a notary, right, we work with the National Notary Association. There's about 120,000 notaries in the US that do 100% of mortgages in America. Those notaries, every year they have to have their notary commission verified, they have to have their background checked and they have to have their identity verified, right, so we're out there trying to prevent notary fraud. You know, a lot of people see this legal advertising on TV, right, there's $2.5 billion spent on legal advertising, right, all those calls go into these digital intake centers around the country and we do, you know. And then, by the way, they're going to release your medical records, right, because you know you sign the contract and then they release your med records. So we do all that compliance to make sure that you know people aren't basically saying they're you and then having your medical records, you know, released right, so that's a good use case. And then having your medical records, you know, released right, so that's a good use case.

Speaker 1: 39:46

We do you know, if you're buying vape or tobacco or something like that, online, you have to be 21. There's age-gated products. We do that. We're very active in the music festivals around the country, proving that you're 21. We do a lot of stuff, like you know, trying to make sure that kids aren't you know kids aren't smoking and buying age-gated products. You know we do fun stuff, like you know.

Speaker 1: 40:16

A lot of the venues, you know, don't issue tickets. Now they issue these credentials, right, you know, we do. You know it's a fun business because the technology is so incredibly diverse. And the technology, steve, as I said in the beginning, is not just about your identifiers, it's about community, right? So we have companies and organizations that are big organizations building community in this sort of Web3 space using these credentials and I wish I had one around here. But this plastic membership card, this thing is useless. It's useless. So all these plastic cards that you walk around with in your leather wallet, all that's going away. It's all going to sit up in some Web3 wallet and allow you to prove information about yourself in a privacy-respecting way.

Speaker 3: 40:59

That's going to be really cool, because I know that it will definitely probably take about four pounds off of the weight that I carry in my wallet with just cards, cards and identification and everything like that. It's really cool to be able to kind of have everything verified through either an app or something, some sort of digital identity, on your phone. Jeff, I can't thank you again. This has been an amazing conversation. I know our listeners have definitely been enlightened by this topic. Would love to have you on again. Can't thank you enough to help shed light on this conversation. A big shout out for you, antinity.

Speaker 1: 41:31

Can't thank you enough for this Cool Steve. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate the very good work that you do on LinkedIn, enlightening the users, and I appreciate this podcast, which I like this podcast, steve, because it's not so technical where there's so many hardcore technical podcasts everywhere. This gives us an opportunity to talk about this stuff to a consumer audience. You know a real world, explain it in real, simple, easy terms. So I appreciate you and I thank you for having me on today.

Speaker 3: 42:00

Absolutely Look forward to it and happy travels everyone. Thanks for listening, jeff, we'll chat soon. Cheers everyone.