identity – Page 18 – Bredemarket

What Happens if the Crypto Exchanges Fail?

Some people who aren’t relying on gold to get through a possible banking system failure or other catastrophic event are placing their trust in crypto.

ISectors, April 25, 2023:

“Bitcoin can be sent and received anywhere in the world, as long as there is an internet connection. This could be useful in a scenario where traditional banking systems fail and access to financial services is limited.”

But an internet connection isn’t the only thing you need to trade crypto.

You also need a crypto exchange, or some other way to trade crypto.
And if that crypto exchange is hacked or goes bankrupt, you may lose your crypto…and there’s no FDIC.

A self custodial hardware wallet sounds great…at first. All you have to do is take your hardware wallet and walk up to the dude in camouflage selling canned Spam and holding his own hardware wallet. OK. Now trade it. On your own. With no help from a peer-to-peer (P2P) trading platform or a decentralized exchange. Google Gemini:

“Hardware wallets are primarily security devices, not trading platforms. They don’t have the functionality to directly swap one cryptocurrency for another….Directly exchanging crypto would require complex cryptographic operations and blockchain interactions, which are not typically handled by hardware wallets.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how to interact with the blockchain all by myself without help. And very few people do. And even those who know this stuff are mostly helpless if the internet is non-operational.

So if the banks fail and/or some other catastrophe takes place, don’t count on crypto to survive.

Frankly we do better when there’s NOT a catastrophic event, protections guard us from fraud, and the bad effects of a fake identity are minimized.

(Post-apocalyptic image from Google Gemini)

Bredemarket Health Page Updates

Most of you who developed a sudden interest in healthcare this week WON’T be interested in this, so move along.

I’ve added 3 new posts (so far) to the Bredemarket Health page since November 2024:

Dr. Jones MD, NPE
Saving Money When Filling Prescriptions: Not You, The Companies
Medical Fraudsters: Birthday Party People

(And no, I have no real interest in addressing the recent murder of a healthcare executive. It’s a crime. End of discussion.)

I approach health and health product marketing from both an identity and technology perspective, recognizing the similarities and differences between biometrics and biometrics, and between PHI and PII.

Health

Know Your Recruiter “Kristen”

(4/14/2025 Fixed a typo. It’s KORN Ferry, not KORAN Ferry.)

Maybe it’s me, but I’m wondering if Kristen really works for SourceOwls. I know she has 980 followers and all, but yet…

I’d post the link to Kristen’s profile, but it would probably be gone by the time you read this.

Anyway, she sent me an InMail, and I responded.

I got my answer.

Seriously, LinkedIn is filled with people who falsely claim that they work for SourceOwls, Korn Ferry, Kelly…even Amazon. And a verified profile doesn’t offer protection, because a verified profile only confirms identity—not employment.

Know your recruiter.

Medical Fraudsters: Birthday Party People

I’ve talked about Protected Health Information (PHI) before. Sadly, the health information is not not protected that well, since fraudsters can acquire PHI very easily in some cases.

Sometimes REALLY easily.

For example, I could call a medical provider or go to a pharmacy and say that my name is Donald John Trump.

Do you know how many medical practitioners verify identities?

By asking for the person’s birthdate.

So there is the possibility that a medical practitioner, after I say that I am Donald John Trump, will simply ask for my birthday without a second thought.

I would reply “June 14, 1946.”

And some of these medical practitioners would immediately grant access!

Of course, the number of successful fraudulent accesses goes up substantially when the real person is NOT well known.

Yet birthdates are considered an acceptable form of security in some parts of the medical world.

Scary.

#honeypot1129

(The original honeypot can be found in a post on my LinkedIn profile.)

As previously promised…

I’ve spent over 10 years in identity and biometrics, and other factors, including one-to-many identification, one-to-one verification, and classification (e.g. how old you are).

But as I have noted in a recent article in the Bredemarket newsletter The Wildebeest Speaks, verifying someone’s identity only goes so far.

(For people reading this on LinkedIn: here comes #honeypot1129, for those paying attention.)

For example, how many LinkedIn users sporting a green banner and an #opentowork hashtag have been approached by a person claiming to be from Company X…who is NOT from Company X?

That, my friends, is #employmentfraud – something that the REAL employees at all the Company X’s out there take very seriously.

Of course, no #fraudster who is doing something like that would be foolish enough to send me a LinkedIn InMail with such a claim…would they?

Or comment on this post and make such a claim?

You’d be surprised…

#fraud

#identity

#knowyourrecruiter

(Pre-Disney image of Winnie the Pooh and his hunny pot from the https://platinumprophouse.com/products/classic-winnie-the-pooh-standee URL)

River Rising

I thought I knew the difference between persons and non-person entities (NPEs), and then the Innu Nation does this:

With its thunderous rapids carving through a wild boreal forest in Quebec’s Côte-Nord region, the Magpie River is well known to white water rafters from around the globe. What these travelers may not know is that the Magpie recently became the first river in Canada to be granted legal personhood.

Insecurity, For Reel

Insecurity

I didn’t write this. Google Gemini wrote this. (And created the image.)

“In essence, identity is the foundation upon which security is built. A strong, well-managed identity infrastructure is essential for protecting digital assets and preventing unauthorized access. By understanding the overlaps between identity and security, organizations can implement robust security measures that safeguard both their digital assets and the privacy of their users.”

So now take a moment and think about security WITHOUT identity.

And shudder.

Will Entities Adopt the SITA-IDEMIA-Indico “Digital Travel Ecosystem”?

Thinking about “de plane” used in the Fantasy Island television series (image CC BY-SA 3.0) makes me think about travel. Mr. Roarke’s and Tattoo’s guests didn’t have to worry about identifying themselves to disembark from the plane and enter the island. But WE certainly do…and different countries and entities need to adopt standards to facilitate this.

I’ve previously observed that standards often don’t emerge, like Athena, from ivory towers. They emerge when a very powerful entity or person (for example, Microsoft or Taylor Swift) says that THIS is the standard, and waits for the world to comply.

Of course, there can be issues when MULTIPLE powerful entities or people try to champion competing standards.

But what if powerful entities band together?

SITA, the global leader in air transport technology, and IDEMIA Public Security, a world leader in digital technologies, biometrics, and security have announced a collaboration to advance interoperability, trust, and data security through a globally recognized Digital Travel Ecosystem.

Add Indico to the partnership, and perhaps the parties may be on to something.

The goal is to create “an open, secure, and interoperable framework that ensures a travelers’ digital identity is trusted globally, without the need for direct integrations between issuers and verifiers.” It is intentionally decentralized, giving the traveler control over their identity.

Perhaps it’s a fantasy to think that others will buy in. Will they?

Or will they instead select Taylor’s version?

CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81523364

California Knows How to Party (California mDL)

Well, it took long enough.

In part because when I first tried to get a mobile driver’s license (mDL), I used my OLD physical driver’s license AFTER I had renewed my driver’s license online (but before I received the new physical license). Data mismatch. Rejected.

And in part because I kept on forgetting to perform the additional steps to confirm my identity.

And in part because I didn’t truly NEED the mDL—I haven’t flown anywhere since April 2023, and for some strange reason no vendor of age-controlled products has insisted on carding me.

California mobile driver’s license (mDL).

But I now have a California mDL. After talking about mDLs for years as a former IDEMIA employee.

I’ve previously espoused the benefits of mDLs. For example, when a retailer DOES check my age before I buy a beer, the retailer doesn’t learn my address or my (claimed) height and weight. The retailer only needs to confirm that I am old enough to buy a beer.

Oddly enough, I had to block out certain information on my displayed mDL in the image above. Because MY privacy requirements obviously don’t conform to California’s privacy requirements.