Have you ever had to give up your personal information to create an account or verify your identity online? If you’re like me and are constantly online, it’s almost certain that you have shared personal details with websites or apps that you would dearly like to be stored safely. But unfortunately that isn’t always the case.

When you trust one entity to store your information, you are relying on them — and only them — to keep your data secure. And any vulnerabilities they have in their systems can result in your data being breached and available for the entire online world to see. That loss of control over your data erodes trust — not just in that company, but in the entire system of digital verification.

So how do you trust anyone with your personal data? How can we make sure that your information stays safe when you provide it to online services for your verification? These are the sort of questions women who used the Tea app found themselves asking after 70,000 images were leaked. The photos included IDs and selfies that were supposed to be used for verification only — and “deleted immediately”.

It’s a stark reminder that even well-intentioned platforms can fail to protect what users trust them with. Our project aims to address that exact problem, finding a better way to verify identity online without putting your data at risk. In the next post, I’ll talk about how our decentralized design works and why we believe it’s a step toward restoring trust in how identity is verified online.