How to prevent being scammed via phone calls using Certisfy

Just as we are plagued by data breaches because of our reliance on secrecy as our model of trust assertion instead of just-in-time information verification, we are similarly plagued by scams related to our inability to verify unknown contacts.

Calls, text messages, emails, etc from unknown sources are now a major source of scams, cyber extortion and such. As was demonstrated here, Certisfy stickers backed by cryptographic certificate signatures can address this type of trust problem too.

If for instance your doctor's office or other place of business that you have a legitimate business relationship with calls you, they can simply begin the message with a sticker code such as below. You can put that sticker code in the Certisfy app and verify the identity and related information, including for the contact source identifier (phone number, email address...etc).

If a message doesn't start with a verifiable sticker code, you drop it immediately, this effectively kills all such scams!!

A legitimate sticker will include the certificate-verified phone number that should match the number you received the call on; similarly if it is an email it should match the message source email address (email clients now generally prevent spoofing).

The sticker approach not only prevent scams but greatly unburdens the receiver since they simply need to use a code and the Certisfy web app to verify the contact, no elaborate internet sleuthing required.

Comments

From a secrecy model of information security to a usage authentication model

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Making Internet Information Trust An Inexpensive Commodity

Certisfy is a service that makes internet information trust a commodity. Think of all the services that entrepreneurs could create if it was easy and inexpensive to integrate information trust without first having a billion people sign-up to build organic trust or loads of VC money. Want to test drive? If you have a website, we can issue you a free sample certificate for personal use!!...Contact us via the info on the sticker above, we'll hand you a code to put on your site (domain validation!!) then issue you a cert once validated. Each certificate comes with the ability to create a free sticker that is good for a month or less; if you want longer lived stickers you'll need to get a payment method certificate and use that to pay for it. Let us know if there are questions!!

Certisfy - Bringing IRL trust to the web

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