The Fight for Identity — solving the human problem. Trust.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden. — Marc Zuckerberg / Facebook

The border between online and offline is disappearing. We connect with others ( social networks ), and use multiple devices and channels when interacting with both each other and businesses. Everything that can be connected, will be. The opportunities are enormous but with the current de-facto way of doing so are the risks. The average user already has at least 90 online accounts per email account, and every businesses wants users to register accounts. When, not if, something bad happens the volumes are huge. We have all read about the big ones like Equifax or Yahoo, but what about the small ones with tens or hundred of thousands users? The ones we do not even know are compromised…

https://blog.gemalto.com/security/2016/09/20/data-breach-statistics-2016-first-half-results/

The Fate of Online Trust in the Next Decade is a great series from PEW which opens many aspects around trust and how we can either gain it or loose it in our digital every day life. The concept of trust will become more a relationship matter, than a technologic issue — a human thing. The problem in the digital world is that we humans have been the users. It’s not our realm, so we go in there as subjects — the rules are different. Someone else controls our relationships in there.

Did you agree to the terms and conditions?

Computers are great solving computer problems. New technology with blockchain probably leading the pack, based on it’s design around mistrust, will be one key element solving computer problems around trust. But will technology itself be enough, or will we need something else?

Are we solving the right problem?

In the previous parts of the series I opened up both the CRM and the VRM models regarding identity. Glome was founded to be the bridge between these models with the core insight:

Personalisation does not require identity, only the context of me.

The context of me is a very human thing. Instead of fighting to get people identified, we must focus on earning their trust. To put Glome in a box ( or segment where other businesses also are ) we describe ourselves as an anonymous CIAM ( Customer Identity & Account Management ) platform. Let’s look at the Digital Disruption image again:

Glome will become the world’s largest account provider, owning no users.

Let that sink in. It really changes things, but at the same time:- it requires nothing from the user ( no friction, no apps, no registration )- it is fully compatible with CRM- it is fully compatible with VRM- it is fully compatible with GDPR

Identity online is a must have, but only in the right places — places you trust. Glome can not have it, thus we can not do evil. We create users for our customers, the businesses using Glome. As we do not know the end users identity, we can not steal or sell them to anyone. Google, Facebook, banks, operators — none of them can do what we do as identity is something you either have or not. There are no grey areas.

Our goal is not to make the web anonymous. We are here to make the web truly human driven and help companies earn users trust!

Glome helps businesses earn trust and serve their customers, and the customers friends, across multiple devices without forcing anyone to register or install apps.

It’s business included, but humans in charge.