bredemarket, Author at Bredemarket

AI Isn’t the Problem: Reputational Damage Is

AI used for evil is bad, but it’s not the worst evil.

Neal K. Shah is victimized

Neal K. Shah self-identifies as “America’s Chief Elder Officer.” And he says that he recently made the news:

“FOX Business just published a story about me – I wish they didn’t have a reason to. Scammers used AI to clone my likeness, and turned it into a WEAPON against the exact people I work to protect – older adults and caregivers.”

According to Shah, the scammers used a Meta tool called Muse Image to create fraudulent deepfakes of Shah endorsing slimeball products. Because of this and other incidents, Meta concluded that Muse Image “missed the mark” and disabled the feature.

(For now. If Muse Image reappears in 2028, don’t be surprised.)

Shah, understandably upset that elderly people were misled, blames evil AI.

“BUT the deeper problem – how trivially easy AI now makes it to impersonate real people and prey on the vulnerable… I think that may only be getting started.”

Shah is wrong. There’s an even deeper problem.

Bredemarket Technology Firm Services weighs in

On LinkedIn, I offered the following comment:

“I don’t know that AI is entirely to blame here. There were fraudsters before AI, and there will be fraudsters after AI.

“The bigger issue is when someone’s name and likeness is fraudulently used—by ANY means—and the platforms do nothing about it.”

Remember when Clifford Irving published Howard Hughes’ autobiography that Hughes never wrote? He didn’t need AI for that. And the scam was revealed when the usually tight-lipped Swiss banks revealed who was really cashing the checks for “author” Howard Hughes.

No evil AI here.

The problems occur after the scam, and aren’t affected by how the scam was perpetrated. The problem is when a platform is scammed, but the platform—a website, a newspaper, whatever—doesn’t bother to correct the record and tell the truth.

Shah:

“I reported [the scam ads] REPEATEDLY – yet they stayed up.”

Now I could have used my Bredemarket Technology Firm Services hat to suggest a solution.

But I didn’t.

I tossed the task elsewhere.

Bredebot weighs in

Now that it’s easier to generate Bredebot content, I let Bredebot write a response.

When someone creates a fake profile using your name, face, and credentials, it is a fast track to reputational damage. But what happens when you hit that “report” button and the platform does absolutely nothing?

For a long time, platforms hid behind broad immunity shields, treating identity fraud like a minor nuisance. But in 2026, the regulatory tide is turning. Relying on passive content moderation is no longer cutting it. Between the FTC’s strict crackdown on impersonation and new federal mandates like the TAKE IT DOWN Act forcing rapid 48-hour responses for deepfakes, platforms that stay passive are looking at massive civil penalties.

When a platform ignores fraud, it isn’t just failing the victim; it’s tanking user trust. It is like hiring a pack of wild wildebeests as marketing consultants, only to wonder why your wombat customers are running away in terror.

If a platform leaves you stranded, you have to document everything, escalate to regulatory channels, and protect your broader digital footprint. Identity security requires proactive defense, not corporate silence. If you need a hand navigating this landscape, John E. Bredehoft at Bredemarket can help you map out a strategy.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Now I just have to convince people that I did NOT endorse a death of passwords book.

But I DO endorse THIS book. Click the pic.

Four pages from "Proving Humanity: The Six Factors of Identity Verification and Authentication" by John E. Bredehoft, Bredemarket. Click on the image to purchase. — This is real. Gumroad.

Buyer Language, Vendor Language…And a Unified Taxonomy

Do buyers and vendors speak different languages? Sometimes it seems that way.

BUYER: “If we arrest the wrong people, our mayor may lose the next election.”

VENDOR: “The Really Cool ABIS offers tunable thresholds that allow minimization of false positives.”

Say what?

If you go to the mayor’s campaign manager and spout something about tunable thresholds, the campaign manager will tune you out.

Bredemarket already has a solution to this problem, but Liminal is offering another one.

Bredemarket’s solution: customer focused, benefits oriented

I can sum up my solution with the simple phrase “put yourself in your prospect’s shoes.”

Your prospect doesn’t care about your solution, or about your company. Your prospect only cares about its problems, such as a re-election campaign.

Here’s what a Bredemarket client might say to the mayor’s campaign manager.

VENDOR: “No mayor wants the political nightmare of arresting an innocent person because of a tech glitch. It damages community trust and creates a major liability. The Really Cool ABIS (Automated Biometric Identification System) can drastically cut down the risk of “false positives” (the system wrongly flagging an innocent person). “

Kinda long, but I had some splainin to do.

But for a vendor to say this, the vendor (or its consultant) must really know ABIS products and function as a biometric product marketing expert.

What if you don’t have a consultant who is a biometric product marketing expert?

Let’s introduce Liminal’s magic word, taxonomy.

Liminal’s solution: A Unified Market Taxonomy

I’ve discussed taxonomies before as a way to organize information. Adobe Experience Manager supports taxonomy creation and automation of same. They’re also used by the UK Home Office in its National Police Chiefs’ Council Minimum POLE Data Standards Dictionary. (POLE is an acronym standing for Person, Object, Location, Event; it has nothing to do with John Paul II.)

Liminal uses its Market Taxonomy to bring the two factions together.

“Markets are messy. Buyers describe their problems in one language, vendors describe their products in another, regulators describe obligations in a third, and practitioners try to hold all of it in their heads at once. Finding trusted market intelligence is hard enough; agreeing on what we’re even looking at is harder still.

“That’s what a market taxonomy is for: one structure that connects what buyers need to what vendors offer, with regulations and market forces shaping the picture at every level.”

So how are they linked? The demand side (buyers) mirrors the supply side (vendors) at every level.

The domain maps to the solution segment. Use cases map to solutions. Requirements map to product capabilities. And translation occurs.

In short: even if you’re not a biometric product marketing expert, Liminal lets you fake it.

Taxonomy Man. Google Lyria. Public Domain.

Clinical Intent

This video has nothing to do with health, but is another repurpose of my thoughts on pivoting.

I went into Gemini Pro mode and told Google Lyria to take “Swivel and Solve” and make it longer. Then I made a new landscape video with images from several others: Forge Your Future, It’s Time, Move Now, and the Koala Identification Factors video. Oh, and also some Proving Humanity promotional material.

“Clinical Intent.” Google Lyria. Public Domain.

When I assembled the final video, the result definitely belongs in the Awareness category. Because the assortment of pictures definitely won’t convert.

It doesn’t even dwell on the pivoting message: namely, that when identity, biometric, and technology leaders face product marketing challenges, the old way may not solve these challenges. When the old way doesn’t work, pivot to something that will.

No, the video doesn’t say any of that.

But if you’ve heard of Bredemarket outside of the video, you already know the marketing and writing services I provide for identity, biometric, and technology firms.

Compelling CONTENT Creation

Blog posts. Among other projects, I’ve authored a multi-month blog series to attract business to a client.
Case studies and testimonials. Among other projects, I’ve written a dozen case studies to justify a firm’s capabilities to its projects.
LinkedIn articles and posts. The multi-month blog series was designed for repurposing as LinkedIn articles.
White papers. My white papers have made the case for the superiority of my clients’ products and services.

Winning PROPOSAL Development

Proposal services (managing, writing, editing, other). My proposals have won business for Bredemarket clients and for my former employers.

Actionable ANALYSIS

Analysis services. My market, product, and competitive analyses for Bredemarket clients and former employers have not only gathered necessary information and insights, but have also suggested a path forward.

Act Now

So how can your tech firm benefit from this content?

If you are ready to stop losing prospects, act now and book a free 30 minute content needs assessment and talk to Bredemarket.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

Swivel and Solve, Short and Square

Just for fun I created an alternate version of my June “Swivel and Solve” video, dumping the late shift. (And the strike force.)

Swivel and Solve (SQ).

But regardless of the form factor, Bredemarket, a leading biometric product marketing consultant, provides expert content, proposal, and analysis services.

My work has produced over $25 million in revenue for nearly two dozen firms.

To solve your challenges, visit https://bredemarket.com/mark/ and schedule a free meeting.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

(“Swivel and Solve” by Google Lyria, Public Domain.)

When Your Product’s Requests for Consent Frighten Your Users

Do your user consent procedures drive your users away?

When a product deals with personally identifiable information (PII), the product vendor is nornmally required to obtain one or more types of consent from their users: consent to process the data, consent to store the data, consent to use the data in algorithmic traijing, and possibly others.

When the consent notice appears on the user’s screen, they will react in one of two ways:

They will provide the requested consent without hesitation.
Something about the consent request frightens them so much that they uit the process right then and there.

By Tim Reckmann from Hamm, Deutschland – Einkaufswagen, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83154898.

It’s yet another example of the abandoned shopping cart problem, where people stop shopping (or in this case consenting) and the seller loses money from a lost sale.

How can you get the first group to 100% and the second group to 0%?

By avoiding these three mistakes.

Mistake 1: your consent request is too vague

What if you ask your users for consent to use their data, but don’t explain how you’re going to use it?

Now some people will sign the consent form anyway, thinking that your company would never do evil things…until they do,

But more discerning people will become immediately suspicious and start asking questions…or just not bother to ask questions and abandon your process.

Mistake 2: your consent request is too detailed

To protect themselves legally, compliance teams often insist on dense, intimidating language full of terms like immutable identifiers, third-party processors, and permanent data storage retention protocols.

Now some people will sign dense documentation even if the fine print requires them to hand over their first born. Others won’t.

If you’re required to talk about immutable identifiers due to some regulation or another, add a preface that explains what immutable identifiers are.

Mistake 3: your consent request doesn’t have a time limit

Some privacy regulations require that companies managing data only keep the data for a specified amount of time. Your consent request should comply with these regulations. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

But even if your local regulations don’t mandate a time limit for storing data, impose one anyway.

Think about the practicality of it. Let’s say you’re requesting resumes for job applications, and I submit one. How useful is that resume going to be to you ten years in the future?

Conclusion

Don’t frighten your users. Ensure that your consent process is easily understandable, not overwhelming, and explains what the users need to know.

Double It To 200 Proof, Steve

Coincidence again? I discussed something from long ago and found myself dealing with it today. Sort of. Prove me wrong.

I recently had occasion to refer to a year-old post that warned about authenticating online customers with knowledge based authentication. There is no guarantee that the person on the other end of the line is actually your customer.

“JOE’S ALCOHOL EMPORIUM: Evelyn, what types of alcohol do you prefer?

“EVELYN’S TEENAGE SON WHO KNOWS HER PASSWORD IS HIS BIRTHDATE: 200 proof, man! Let’s get wasted!”

His mom is gonna be so mad…

Meanwhile Steve Craig—formerly of PEAK IDV, now with Prove—is participating in the launch of a new podcast.

Its name?

100proof Powered by Prove.

Steve, should you double the proof to attract the drunken teenager crowd?

Google Gemini. Deepfake. This is not real.

I guess not, since these aren’t Prove’s hungry people…I mean thirsty people.

But if you are in Prove’s…um…target audience, you will be (as LinkedIn says) excited and thrilled to learn that 100proof’s first guest is Steve Craig’s coworker Frances Zelazny, who has joined Prove as its General Manager of New Market Initiatives. Zelazny offers immense expertise in the identity industry. In fact we were coworkers for a few months at Safran, but she was on the other side of the impenetrable wall between MorphoTrust and MorphoTrak.

Join Steve and Frances today at 2pm Pacific Time on LinkedIn.

Marketing a Biometric Product Without a Biometric Product Marketing Expert

Bob and Judy had left television production and started a biometric company. Bob handled sales, Judy engineering. As their company grew, they both realized they needed help.

Bob turned to Judy one day. “What we need is a product marketer, but not just any product marketer. We need a biometric product marketing expert. I know a guy-“

Judy cut him off. “Forget it. Any so-called expert is hampered by legacy. We need new thinking.”

As they used to say, you won’t believe what happened next!

All the features

Ron, their new hire, was a fast learner who listened to Judy for hours, soaking up everything she knew until Ron understood every feature perfectly.

Ron assembled his product marketing materials, clearly differentiating the superior technical advantages of his product. Bob then took the materials out on a sales call.

That afternoon Bob returned, dejected.

“The prospect threw the brochures in the trash.”

“Why?” Ron asked.

“They didn’t make sense and didn’t speak to their needs.”

None of the use cases

Ron belatedly realized that the materials didn’t address the benefits the prospect would realize from using Bob and Judy’s biometric solution. And the owners realized that Ron needed to understand the biometric market so that his materials resonated with customers.

So Ron studied the market carefully, spending a lot of time with cops and forensic experts before rewriting his brochures to infuse them with industry knowledge.

A well-prepared Bob flew out to meet his next prospect, a well-known sports team in Chicago.

And returned the next day, dejected again.

“They loved the first hour,” Bob reported, “although all the talk about investigative leads confused them. Then they asked about consent.”

Ron, fresh from police station booking rooms, was confused. “Who needs consent to take bionetrics?”

“Sports teams, banks, hotels, office buildings, hospitals, you name it,” Bob replied. “Especially in Illinois.”

Fumbling Towards Insolvency

Sarah McLachlan. “Found a Job” it’s NOT.

Maybe “insolvency” is harsh, but if a biometric firm doesn’t have the embedded knowledge to speak the language of its prospects and customers, the firm’s success will be limited. Immediate expertise is impossible.

“A Patient Hand.” Google Lyria. Public Domain.

Bob, Judy, and Ron may be fictional, but lack of biometric expertise happens in real life. I still remember the time I worked with a company that was bragging about its three-year old NIST FRTE facial recognition accuracy rankings. I gently explained that FRTE results change monthly, with better algorithms appearing all the time. Those old results were worthless.

And your product marketing will be worthless also, unless you understand the many products and many markets.

Bredemarket can help you speak the language of your biometric prospects. Talk to Bredemarket.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

International Data Sharing With CARICOM

Local and state governments cooperate, and national and multinational agencies do also.

Anthony Kimery at Biometric Update:

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) regional security agency, Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), signed an agreement to create the first multilateral biometric information sharing arrangement established by DHS, extending U.S. immigration vetting and border security checks across participating Caribbean countries.”

Because once someone has data, there is no TECHNICAL reason why they can’t share it with anyone else.

Comfort in the Frame

No more trips to CVS for passport photos?

“Comfort in the Frame.” Google Lyria. Public Domain.

For fuller background information, see “Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Online Passport Applications, July 2, 2026.”

For more on what ICAO Document 9303 recommends regarding facial expression, see this post.

And this song.

“Neutral Expression.” Google Lyria. Public Domain.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Online Passport Applications, July 2, 2026

United States passport applications may soon become easier, allowing you to do nearly everything online. Even the passport photo, saving you a trip to a location where someone or some machine wilk take the passport photo for you.

From Secretary Rubio’s recorded remarks:

“Now, beyond that I would say that we are also looking at some technological changes, which we’ll be more fully able to announce over the coming months, where it’s going to be a lot easier to get a passport in terms of the dynamics of it. You’ll actually be able to go online. You’ll be able to do almost all of it entirely online. One of the questions we had was most of the devices that people are using, be it a laptop or a standing computer or what have you, where you would fill out this application, they have cameras on them. I know, it’s shocking. But they have cameras. They have videos that people use.

“You should be able to take that picture on that device as opposed to going somewhere. Now, the CVS people, of course, hate this, and the Walgreens and all those other places. (Laughter.) But you’ll be able to take your picture from that device and be able to have it in real time, through our security system, verify the facial ID. And it just saves you a lot of – you don’t have to go down somewhere now and get a head shot and get the little pictures that you have to cut and then submit three passport pictures. You’ll be able to do that. You’ll be able to do it online entirely, for the most part, with all the right numbers. They’ll be able to verify it for you, and you should be able to get it much sooner.

“So we’re going to make it a much more customer-friendly – we’re not ready to do that yet, but that’s really what we want to be able to do. (Applause.) And it should cut down on the long waits, the long lines, the appointments, the making – some people may still decide to do it that way, but this way will be available to people. And we look forward to, like, really rolling that out in a few months when it’s ready.”

Secretary Rubio didn’t go into the technical details of how they will ensure ICAO compliance for smartphone photos. What about the lighting? What about the inter-eye distance? What if I smile?

After all, smartphone photos are by definition “unconstrained,” unlike the photos you get at your friendly neighborhood CVS Pharmacy.