Verifying Members: How can BP help you more safely connect?

[Joshua Dorkin]

One of the challenges that we all face today, I believe, is coming to know and trust people that we meet online.

This is an incredibly difficult task for everyone, and is why doing your due diligence on deals and people is paramount these days.

We've been brainstorming for some time how to come up with a way to help you with this task and have come up with some ideas.

Before we proceed with anything, I wanted to get your feedback, as I think it will help us find our path forward.

Q1: If You're Going to Do Business with Someone, how much information would you want from them to identify that they are who they say they are?

In other words, what would I need someone to show me to prove that they are who they say they are?

Q2: Beyond a drivers license or passport match, are there other methods that would help you feel confident that someone is who they claim to be?

Q3: In order to make yourself more "credible," would you be willing to pay some fee (TBD) for BiggerPockets to "verify" that you (the person you claim to be on your BP profile) are who you really are.

I've spoken with several members who believe that having some means to verify your ID is a great step in the right direction. They felt that by our "verifying" their identity, it would give them more legitimacy and would help them stand out amongst those people here (and elsewhere online) who use fake names/identities.

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Personally, I think it also lends more legitimacy, and hope that you agree. We're also exploring ideas about verifying that a member has done the deals/business that they claim . . . more about this another time.

This is an extremely important subject and I'm looking forward to your feedback.

Thanks!

[Brad B.]

I think this is an interesting issue and I'm glad to see it addressed in this forum.

The first thing I would say is that BP should probably not act as the verifying agent. Taking money and issuing a verified-by certification based on BP management evaluation for someone's profile is asking for trouble. I think a few litigators just wet themselves in excitement thinking about it.

If I owned BP, I would keep as far out of the mix as possible except to provide a central directory. I would look to act simply as a broker or a trusted middle man. Take the money to cover a background / identity check and then pass that off to a reputable vendor. If everything comes back good, then issue the avatar or whatever device to show the person is reasonably believed to be who they say they are.

This model does offer up quite an opportunity for enhanced checks. See if the vendor is willing to do a simple check for some low amount covered within the price of a pro account membership. That would be a good entry level. If a member wants a more thorough validation, say if they were doing more deals via the site, then offer an enhanced background through the vendor. It may be a good marketing expense for the member.

The big thing is to not have BP make the final determination on who is trustworthy and who isn't. Base the data on the analysis of a company specially designed to absorb the risks associated.

My day job doesn't specifically do backgrounds, but I deal with it quite a bit. Generally, we see basic checks being done reasonably - a couple hundred dollars - which if you could negotiate a volume deal with a vendor, you could probably negotiate that price down to something manageable for a membership upsell. A good due-diligence check for someone in an important position normally runs a few thousand, which again could be negotiated as an upsell.

After that we start seeing big dollars. A corporate board member investigation could run into the $100k+ range depending on the company. Your typical top secret bg investigation would be somewhere in that range as well. My rambling point is that even at those top levels, no one can be 100%. It becomes about acceptable risk.

I would hate to see BP go away because someone trusted someone else in a deal gone bad because of a determination made solely by BP management and the lawyers came out to play. I think the idea is great, as long as it's executed correctly.