While Twitter wants to sell its verification, Microsoft will do it for free on LinkedIn As Elon Musk tears at Twitter's credibility by demanding businesses and individuals pay for their blue verification checks, Microsoft is pushing its own free digital ID tech to companies and their employees on LinkedIn. Later this month, Microsoft will let organizations use its Verified ID tool to prove their workers' …
Microsoft wants the digital ID so they can index us with a single ID. All that meta data, email content and web browsing, all under one ID they can sell onto third parties.
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!" Sound familiar?
PS. If it does become popular you can guarantee a monthly fee to 'maintain' your identity.
Even forgetting the notion of trusting a company with your identity that has no credible reputation for security. They don't even understand the meaning of decentralised, they are centralising your identity into their single system that identifies you everywhere. Nope, you can [explicit]
> "Until now, we have not had a good digital equivalent."
And we still haven't.
This system only works for people who are employed. It is also a one-time verification, not knowing (or caring) when a verified person changes employer, starts working for themself or stops working altogether, or people who work for an outfit that has not sold its soul to Microsoft isn't part of their Entra scheme.
isn't part of their Entra scheme
That's short for entrails because Microsoft wll have you by the guts. Or because entrails, like MS, are full of.. well, you know.
But this from the company that every time it does an update proceeds to blue-screen my PC. And in typical MS fashion just tells me a 'Critical Process' has died. Err.. like.. what critical process? I get the feeling it does this because I'm not co-operating with it's telemetry collection and data rape. MS doesn't need to 'verify' my identity because I'm pretty sure I know who I am. MS may think it makes their data harvesting operation more valuable, but based on evidence I've seen (like it's ad-flinging), any business that relies on MS for accurate user profiles are a bunch of f'ng idiots.
"Until now, we have not had a good digital equivalent."
This remark is rubbish, just like some of the other remarks in the article written from a rather limited "local" perspective. And my guess would an US one.
There are multiple countries in Europe where the government (please note, government, not some commercial party with a for-profit primary objective) provides digital identification means to their citizens.
Which brings us to the next point: really, a commercial company providing identification outside their own applications/ eco system? Really?
Another indication that this article is not applicable for a global audience:
"The goal of such decentralized IDs is to allow a person's digital identity to follow them as they move through Microsoft's online world, similar to how an individual's driving license can be used to board an airplane or open a bank account."
I'm not sure what silly country we are referring to here, because if I can do that all with a drivers license, they probably also won't ask me to take off my shoes when trying to board a plane, or put my liquids, all smaller than 100 ml, in a plastic zip lock bag so it can be scanned separately. Or is this only valid for certain driver licenses, but not the ones of the countries I have?
>> similar to how an individual's driving license can be used to board an airplane or open a bank account.">
> I'm not sure what silly country we are referring to here,...... Or is this only valid for certain driver licenses, but not the ones of the countries I have?
In the US, 50+ states/territories issue driver IDs (and similar ID for non-drivers), but post-9/11 the Fed issued guidelines for "Real ID" and threatens to make it mandatory in several situations.
"On May 7, 2025, U.S. travelers must be REAL ID compliant to board domestic flights and access certain federal facilities."
https://www.dhs.gov/real-id
https://www.dhs.gov/real-id/real-id-faqs
This is a paperwork storm, not a loyalty check:
"At a minimum, you must provide documentation showing: 1) Full Legal Name; 2) Date of Birth; 3) Social Security Number; 4) Two Proofs of Address of Principal Residence; and 5) Lawful Status."
They will still check your shoes and liquids. Just because you are you is no reason to trust you.
(I believe there is a higher class of ID which can lessen the shoe-check; you know Musk et al are not barefooting in the airport.)
I don't know ANY connection to "bank accounts". Each bank makes its own rules. Before mass drug sales, only token ID (say, phone bill) was needed to open a personal account. I have shown my driver's license at the bank (the human tellers normally never see me, only the ATM) but I think the staff has discretion.
I was born in the middle of the US in the middle 1950s of 3rd-generation Americans, but there is some glitch in my "status". I can collect Social Security money but the computer can't be sure I am "Real"? I have to go to the Federal Building in the state capital to get paperwork(!), but the office was closed for a couple years. Also partly "my state's fault" because Maine delayed implementation of Real ID hoping it would go away.
I don't know ANY connection to "bank accounts". Each bank makes its own rules. Before mass drug sales, only token ID (say, phone bill) was needed to open a personal account. I have shown my driver's license at the bank (the human tellers normally never see me, only the ATM) but I think the staff has discretion.
Not sure each bank does make it's own rules. Banks have to comply with national implementations of international money laundering rules, so have to identity check people that want to open accounts. Other professions have similar rules, ie to hire a lawyer you need to provide proof of identity. In the UK, and most of Europe there are also anti-illegal immigrant rules where employers have to verify the person's identity and right to work before they can hire them.
So identity verification is already huge business, and with huge potential for growth. It's pretty much the same creeping compulsion the UK government used to try to push ID Cards. Things that we could already do would somehow become more 'convenient' with an ID Card. Hiring bicycles, buying a train ticket, buying alchohol etc. And of course there's the push to make the Internet 'safe' by verifying age and identities there, so proof of age before watching pron, or just anti- 'hate speech' and trolling. There's a chilling example of this here from the OG Minitruth-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-65114966
The 'ninjas' fighting climate change denial on Twitter
By Marco Silva BBC Climate Disinformation Specialist
Secretive internet vigilantes have made it their mission to fight climate change denial on Twitter. But, as a vicious information war rages online, do they risk becoming the very trolls they claim to be targeting?
They ask me not to reveal their real names or their exact whereabouts. Over the years, they have made countless enemies on the internet, and they believe stepping out of the shadows could prove dangerous...
..."When I engaged climate change deniers, I noticed some of them got agitated. So I continued to do it, until the point they showed harassing behaviour [against me], which is not allowed," he told me. "Then you can get rid of them."... "I can't see any real-world damage worse than what they are doing," he says. "When they are trying to convince people climate change is a myth, they are inflicting damage upon all of us."
So it opens by confirming something many sceptics already know. The Bbc has a lot of 'Disinformation Specialists', but then as a state broadcaster, propaganda is part of it's job. It opens with a bit of a rhetorical question, because yes, they are trolling sceptics in an attempt to get their accounts banned. So much for 'free speech'. The Bbc's trolls want their identities protected, because they fear the consequences, real or imaginary. Sceptics may just 'fact check' them and discover that although the trolls may have some 'background in science', it's unrelated to climate science. The same is true for most of the Bbc's own climate 'experts', but this also explains why they're so easily fooled.
So there's a lot of lobbying around creating a 'Social Credit' system both on and offline. The Bbc regularly nags you to create an account and login to it's 'news' sites. Why? People are already punished for crimethink. Question the narrative, you will be denied a voice. You may even face actual criminal charges, because some thoughts cannot be spoken, communicated or tolerated. Debate and dissent are not tolerated in our free and fair democracies, as the Bbc shows.
But again it's big business. Silence those pesky protestors! Jail or fine 'deniers' for ecocide! Obey, Citizen!. Much as with the UK's ID Cards, the problem wasn't so much the card, but the database behind it that hoovers up collosal amounts of personal information that can be used to calculate your social credit score. Or flog you carbon indulgences. Or in MS's case, flog adverts and identity verification services. MS's approach is especially cynical. Because employers have to verify employee's identities anyway, MS can just ride on the back of that and get free verification it can wholesale on.
by Microsoft no doubt, being able to identify and track you across the digital world. And what better way than by making it compulsory through your employer? Just another woeful step down the road to them getting to poke their noses into every aspect of your life and then monetise it in any way they dream up, privacy be damned in the name of the thirst for ever higher profits.
Not so much LinkedIn as LockedIn, for life, to their benevolent and glorious data harvesting ecosystem.
Yep. Unlike Passport.net and Windows Live ID, Microsoft Accounts are finally gaining traction because they started with corporates first and forced them into Windows (local accounts are getting more difficult to use especially for home versions) and XBox.
Obviously the next step is to have a 1:1 link from accounts to people in the real world, starting once again with corporates in the form of Linked In.
It's blindingly obvious what's happening, and yet somehow you've already been downvoted twice.
not long after MS bought it...
That was the day I deleted my account (or tried to.). I still get recruiters calling even though I last updated it in 2009.
Mind you my old Limited Company that I dissolved in 2007 is still doing the rounds on various lists.
To me, LinkedIn was never that much use. Even less these days.
I only created an account when I was recruiting and wanted to see a bit more about what applicants were posting there (it was - or seemed - relevant, at the time)
From then on, numerous head hunters got in touch just to have me on their notebooks, as one or two who I chatted about it confirmed - they want options to present to their clients, the more, the better. It really doesn't matter to them if you're willing to go to interviews, once on their notebooks, they'll show their clients how large a roster they hold...
It's a race to the end of the rainbow for the pot of gold. The company that locks down digital identity will be as rich as MS for a mini eternity.
It is all about profit. Every kind word, every; this is how we help you/do for you - is all about harvesting you as a product to sell.
It seams all good and well, till you get locked out without recourse.
MS, I don't want your digital ID, because your entire infrastructure is an All eggs in one basket design. (all duct taped with powershell scripts and xml tables)
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