What Info Would You Give Twitter To Verify Your Account?

News is breaking today that a fake Twitter account for the wife of Rupert Murdoch, Wendi Deng Murdoch, which was verified by Twitter was actually a fake account.  According to The Next Web story the account was verified automatically by Twitter and with no contact with the account owner.  That verification status has now been removed however the account itself is still up and running.  Whoever the voice is behind the tweets is also very active and entertaining media interviews it would seem by following their timeline.

However, as you can tell by the title of this story, this is not about the fake account but the verification process by Twitter.  They apparently validated this account on some level and took it for real but without apparent contact with the owner of the account how did they determine it was for real?

Twitter’s account validation process was in beta early on but has since closed but some accounts still get a verified status which I assume occurs when a popular person has their people contact Twitter to request it.

So that brings me to this question – what personal information would you be willing to provide Twitter to validate your account?

• Credit Card
• Scanned or faxed ID card

Maybe Twitter can develop a method of unique validation that would not require you to give up sensitive information to get verified.  If they could come up with that then that would also solve this whole underage accounts and users on social media that has been a huge discussion point.

Whatever the method or process it is becoming clearer with each day that there needs to be a simple but trustworthy means to validate our identities across a multitude of accounts and websites.  Don’t forget the safety of that personal information as well in the scheme of things.

That identification process is the next big thing in the digital world.

What do you think the solution is?

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Richard Hay  (3392 Posts)

Richard is the Owner of WindowsObserver.com and has been involved in tech for over 25 years. His first website – AnotherWin95.com – came online in 1995. Back then he used GeoCities Web Hosting for it and what you see here today is the result of the work he has continued on the site since 1995. In January 2010 his community contributions were recognized by Microsoft when he was awarded the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for Windows Desktop Experience. In January 2011 he was renewed as a Microsoft MVP but in a new category called Windows Expert - Consumer and in January 2012 he received the award for the third time.