What's Up with Tech?
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With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
If Identity Becomes Portable, Does Trust Become Universal?
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Trust has become the entry ticket to the internet, and users are now choosing safety over price and speed. We sit down with Raj from Trua to dig into the 2025 Trust Survey and why verification has shifted from a nice-to-have to a must-have. From shocking stats on consumer expectations to the real reasons fear and fatigue are rewriting behavior, we map out what it takes to build platforms people will actually use—and pay for.
We walk through the practical playbook: make safety the first thing users see, put verified badges and last-checked timestamps front and center, and adopt “friction by design” to deter bad actors without punishing good ones. Raj breaks down progressive checks that scale with risk—identity and address for low-stakes, licenses and criminal screens when necessary, and liveness for high-impact flows like dating and hiring. He explains why trust tech is emerging as its own category and how a reusable, tokenized credential can follow you across apps, slashing repeated data collection while boosting conversion and confidence.
AI and deepfakes add urgency. With bots posing as people, human identity verification becomes essential for high-risk interactions, and continuous authentication helps separate real users from synthetic scams. We also explore the regulatory landscape, why co‑opting consumers is cheaper and more effective than piling on rules, and how brands like Apple translate privacy into loyalty. The gig economy emerges as the flash point: tens of millions move across platforms that need fast, safe onboarding and fewer data silos to breach.
If you care about growth, retention, and brand resilience, now is the time to operationalize trust. Subscribe, share this episode with a product or security leader, and leave a review with one change you’ll make to bring safety to the surface.
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Hey everyone! We know that trust has become the new digital currency. And today I'm with Trua and their 2025 trust survey. Fascinating insights. Top line. Consumers now rank platform safety and transparency over price or convenience. That's a pretty amazing insight. Raj, how are you?
SPEAKER_00:I'm really well, Evan. Thanks for having me today.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for being here. Before we dive into the trust survey, for those who aren't familiar with Trua, how do you describe yourself these days?
SPEAKER_00:Well, Trua is a provider of a reusable trust credential. So you can use it for a background check, a typical employment background screening for platforms or for any of those other trust and safety issues. So one of the fundamental problems we have in society today is every time somebody has to trust you, you have to keep giving your personal information over and over again. Wouldn't it be great to get it once, just like a driver's license? You go through a vetting process, get it once, and then you show that. And then in this digital world, you won't be able to use it and attach it to any verification that is required in any transaction. And that's what we have built based on our experience in developing uh in my previous life, uh, like TSA pre-check, for example. Right? And then we have studied the MDL proliferation that is slow in uh uh uh study, but it's going to take a long, long time. But we have a shortcut for that, where you can combine both the MDL requirement and the TSA pre-check for the entire commercial world.
SPEAKER_01:It's an amazing opportunity. So let's dive into the trust survey. What stood out to you most? Uh what surprised you about how consumers view safety today?
SPEAKER_00:Well, the biggest eye-opener in the near universal is the near universal uh intensity, I would say, of safety demands. Uh, if I recall, uh 80 plus percent or 85 plus percent, say a platform safety reputation is essential to even try it. And then 60% will pay a premium for verified checks. What surprised me is how this isn't just nice to have anymore. It used to be nice to have people who just log in uh instantly and do start doing things, but it's not anymore. It's a hard filter for many, many people. Even more striking, only 18% uh uh feel very confident uh platforms actually uh screen and vet providers properly. If I'm getting a care.com uh service or or whatever service that I'm getting online, uh there is a very uh there is a you know uh uh verify and then trust somebody as opposed to trust but verify, right? It's right off the bat. We have changed the paradigm to verify first and then trust. Uh so that's the big thing. The gap between expectation and reality is massive, and consumers are voting with their wallets and feet. Gen Z is a low bar, 77% want uh background checks versus 91% boomers are counter are sometimes counterintuitive. I expect digital natives, the Gen Z obviously to be more paranoid, not less. And that's one uh even though 77% with 91%, you know, it's all the way up there, but still I would have expected uh Gen Z to be screaming a lot more. But you know, this is still high up there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, why why do you think trust has overtaken price and convenience as the top factor for users? What's going on?
SPEAKER_00:Uh it's fundamental. Fear and fatigue from endless breaches and AI scams uh has flipped the hierarchy. Price was king when risk felt abstract way back when when we had uh e-commerce and uh digital uh transactions were picking up. Uh, 55% of them now cite fraud as the number one risk. And 75% fear bots pretending to be humans. In fact, I recently wrote a uh post about agentic AI commerce, and that's going to be a nightmare coming up. Uh convenience still matters, but when your home address or social security or financial data is uh on the line, as in like job boards, rightshares, and dating apps, uh, one bad experience erases years of cheap, fast wins. Trust is now the entry ticket, in my opinion. Without it, price and speed are irrelevant. The survey shows actually, um uh I just make some notes here. Uh 35% prioritize trust and safety measures when hiring, just behind pricing, proving it's no longer a secondary concern.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. And you know, beyond pricing, and the survey shows 86%, that's basically everyone, uh, won't use a platform without a proven safety reputation. Doesn't that change how companies should design its user experiences, its customer experiences?
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Safety must be the first thing users see and feel, not buried in uh uh you know three layers below in settings. Right up front, they should be uh uh screaming at the consumer, your safety is of prime uh importance for us, and here's what you can do, right? Think about many platforms. They go like three steps, five steps into the settings to figure out what the heck is all going on. So it should be default, right? I mean, that's what it should be. I know people are interested in collecting a lot of the data. So onboarding, for example, replace uh sign up in 30 seconds with uh get verified in 30 seconds and start using, right? Uh so visual hierarchy, for example, verified badges, you know, uh true like trust scores or something similar to that, and last checked, for example, timestamps should also be right there because that way you are engaging the consumers in this journey, right? It is it cannot be a dictatorial aspect either by businesses. Consumers and businesses have to work together in this whole big uh uh transformation and what I call the paradigm shifting process. And and I I say friction by design. People are saying, oh, it has to be frictionless. Forget that in this day and age, it should be friction by design. That means you're not letting any crooks just come into your platform, right? Friction by uh make unverified profiles visually downgraded, you know, grade out, load in search to nudge behavior without banning. Right? Progressive disclosure, for example, let users opt into deeper checks, right? If I want a XYZ, I get this must check. And then if I want a further up, I gotta verify your uh uh bankruptcy. If you have bankruptcy to uh get this additional uh loan or additional X, Y, and Z, right? I have to check some of those progressive stuff to make sure that the safety and security of all are maintained on the platforms, right? And driver passed through a check three days ago, front and center, right there, or some other check, right? So, right in the check. So I, as a seeker of a service, for example, uh feel comfortable at the same time. So the the the dynamic is here is service seekers and service givers, for example, in all of these platforms. If it's just one one-time transaction, yes, you can get away with a lot of things. But if it is a long-term relationship transaction, right, I'm going to seek service from this platform, and the platform is going to provide me this service, right? So you have to have an established protocol to say, okay, I am going to continuously screen and verify and bet on an ongoing basis.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. So uh really striking is 60% of people say they pay more for verified background checks. Consumers are notoriously stingy, they don't want to pay for anything, much less more. Um, is trust tech becoming its own kind of product category?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, absolutely, right? Uh, trust is the new currency, as you pointed out in the uh in your opening statement, right? Trust is the new currency. 60% or whatever you uh the number, I forget, I think 60 or 70% are willing to pay more for checks. Uh mirrors a rise of premium, uh like antivirus or our uh our VPNs. You know, once it used to be a niche product, now it's sort of mainstream, in my opinion. Think about that, right? Antivirus and uh VPN's uh usage has become sort of a mainstream for many, many people. So that's why we are pretty confident that in our truest reusable blockchain-based backed uh uh credentials are the blueprint, right? It's like a portable digital passport that follows you across multiple platforms, whether it's Airbnb, TaskRabbit, or LinkedIn or any of those things. So you take it with you, you can attach it to any platform. That way you don't have to keep doing it over and over again.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. Um, AI bots and deepfakes are now a major uh threat. Uh they're also going mainstream. I just recently signed up for Sora, which is now the number one app on the App Store. And deepfakes are now going uh yeah, mainstream. It's the most popular app behind Chat GPT ever introduced, and uh it's basically making your own deepfakes uh for fun and entertainment. But we there's obviously a lot more nefarious uses you know in this new visual environment. What role should visual verification or identity play? Because now deepfakes are everywhere in everyone's hands, essentially.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so this is going back to my uh pet peeve about when people say identity, it's not verifying your login credentials, it's human identity verification, right? Are you a human being on the other side of the transaction? It's going to get even worse with this agentic uh uh commerce. I'm just telling you this. It's a disaster waiting to happen. So it's a mandatory, real-time, human-proof signals have to be part of the transaction. You know, liveness checks for high-stake interactions, dating, hiring, those kinds of stuff. I'm sure you have heard the big uh issue about the North Korean uh hiring and recruiting scam, right? It's a that was a classic thing. You never bothered to check the human identity on the other end. And then uh trust self-continuous verification is also important, for example, right? So the once you get this uh a trust credential for life, so and then you can authenticate on an ongoing basis using your uh uh face and uh liveness detection, right? Yeah, I'm it's not gonna solve there are people that are out there to just scame or do something that's uh uh that's always gonna happen. I I always say if you can cover 98% of the society, 2%, yes, you can. Today we are the opposite, right? Only 2% they think that it's a safe trend and 98% of potential uh uh uh landmines. So we are working hard, twice as hard, putting systems and boundaries and and and and and and blockades and so on and so forth. And then it's coming to a grinding halt in some cases. And some cases it's flying by pretty fast because the people are not able to decipher between a real transaction and a fake transaction. It's just becoming really, really bad with AI. And I think they were just about slightly trying to catch up to security and trust and safety on various platforms, I call digital platforms, and then you boom, comes the AI, and now you're gonna work twice as hard to catch up to that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's incredible how it's every category, job boards, dating, uh, on and on and on. So, how do you standardize trust? Is it a platform like Trua that that without overcomplicating identity?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so but see, identity, if I we focus only on the human aspect of the identity, right? You're not focused on login, password, uh uh authentication, right? That's uh uh no, but these days you have to verify that the other side is human. And and and you know, okay, let's assume this uh agent commerce is gonna take off, right? And you granted permission for the your agent or a part, I call it, to do a transaction, but you never authorize it to do more than X, Y, and Z, or never authorized to do it three times a day. But somehow it gets wound up in that, and it's only a matter of time before that becomes a nightmare, and you're gonna throw your device uh uh in the water and just walk away because it's a this is just beyond thing. So you need to have and so the problem of verification of human identity is a big one. How do you solve a lot of people are now saying, okay, I'll verify this, I'll put this system in place, and so on and so forth. It becomes onerous on both the relying party and the consumer. I have to carry multiple passwords, I have to carry X, Y, and Z. If you standardize that, which is basically having a trust credential for life, which is basically codified your social date of birth and all of your personal attributes into a reusable token, for example, then you carry that token, you can screw around with that part of my friend, screw around with the token, nothing is going to happen. But because nobody can decipher that that token has certain attributes about you, and then you carry that with you and you can attach it to a whole lot of transactions and interactions. That is the best part about having a reusable trust credential.
SPEAKER_01:Fantastic. So you mentioned the FTC is warned about rising AI scans. Beyond warning, um, you know, people are overloaded by warnings and alerts and doom, doom uh predictions. But should regulators or platforms kind of take the lead in tackling this new way of discussion of the room. I mean, you're in yeah, you're in DC, you're involved in much of the regulatory side over the years.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, you know, it's it's a love-height relationship for us with the regulators because regulators are stuck in uh industrial age. They say, okay, because their their fundamental paradigm is here's a consumer, here's a uh relying party or uh businesses, and businesses uh they put owners on the business uh of uh putting all kinds of band aids and say this you have to do this to the consumer, you cannot do this to the consumer. And then you keep adding to uh uh to that particular uh friction over and over again, and then somebody is trying to find a work around that. Because think about the cost of doing business uh has quadrupled in the last couple of decades. Just for the same type of interaction or transaction, because of the regulatory and and then the uh legal burden, right? Whether it's wrongful claims or uh open for ambulance chases all the time and say, okay, you didn't do this, you didn't do this. So keep it simple, co-opt the consumer as well. I've always said there's nothing wrong. You're treating consumers as dumb. No, they're pretty smart. If they have a cell phone, they are smart enough to read a few sentences and say, okay, I shouldn't be doing that, I shouldn't be doing it. Co-opt them in this journey so that they are part of the equation as well. So uh, I mean, you know, when you co-opt, what happens is a whole bunch of regulatory guidelines can be thrown out because they exist only to protect the consumer because the consumer did not have any visibility into their data. Now you're providing data visibility into the consumer to the consumer and have them verify as well. So that's the biggest uh thing that you can have. And then I I mean there's no magic wand to this because the scammers are always going to be there. How do you minimize without exponentially increasing the cost of doing business?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, really well said. And it's not just cost. I mean, there are brands that turn trust into genuine competitive advantage. Uh, I mean, I think of Apple, for example, they seem to do a good job, at least on the security side. Are there other examples of brands that are getting trust and security right? What can we learn from them?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh Apple's always been a forefront, right? I mean, for example, I have my settings uh done in my Apple, right? People don't understand the location service and all of those things. But when they do install a patch or an upgrade, all of my settings are saved. Many platforms, you have to go back and redo the whole privacy settings, which is kind of people don't realize that because your um uh downloads are automatic these days. They update your software when you sleep, and then you think hunky dory, and then all of a sudden, wait a minute, how is this coming along, right? So I I give thousand percent marks to Apple in this in this instant because they will be uh the uh you know the privacy company, in my opinion.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There are a handful of other companies that uh uh focus on these things, because what has happened is uh in the whole 15 years of digital um um uh you know transformation, people have figured out that your data is more valuable to them. So I'm gonna figure out how to extract that out of you. But if if you put the data on you and you control it, right, we're on to something in the future where you can start monetizing your data by voluntarily giving it to people to say, hey, go ahead and market uh whatever services you have to me in exchange for you know two dollars per trans, whatever that, you know, exchange for some monetary exchange. That way I get to keep my profile up to date. I'm spending a couple of bucks, but I'm getting that returned through some other means. Just like your credit card, for example, right? Some of the premium credit cards, they charge you an annual fee, but they give you lots of credits and other things, whether it's a$300 credit towards uh uh, you know, your next flight ticket or X, Y, and Z, you get something back. And if you add up that, that's a pretty big chunk. It's it's no different.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's interesting. All the social media platforms, including LinkedIn and Facebook, many others, offer a uh uh value-added fee where you get verified and you have a customer support. And um it seems like a no-brainer. Um, what are the most urgent industries that need to address this? I'm thinking healthcare, really challenging environment, transportation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, digital platforms providing any type of service, right? I'm not talking about buying a uh a pencil or the uh internet, I'm talking about any type of service that is provided or digital platform, marketplace platform, because that's where here's the problem, right? The gig economy, I call it, right? In the gig economy, there are what, plus or minus. The last time I checked from the Department of Labor, 60 or 65 million people are in the gig economy, and I'm sure there's increased. Yeah. Um, in in in in in just the United States alone, right? So they are providing uh all they're taking all kinds of jobs, and every time they go, they have to provide their personal information so that the platform can verify that, right? Keep doing that because they are desperate for a job or desperate for a gig, so to speak. And what happens is that data starts storing in multiple locations, prime for hacking. So instead, if you give a, I'm just giving you a gig credential, right? I'm calling it gig credential or uh trust credential. Hey, you keep this. Anybody who wants to hire, whether it's a restaurant worker, your bus boy quit this morning, you need a bus boy for this evening restaurant. How are you going to verify that person is legitimate to work and uh come on board the same day? If you have a trust credential that was already pre-vetted, hey, you just verify that. It takes them 30 seconds or less to verify, yep, you have no uh uh background issues, come work in my restaurant, right? So high speed onboarding once you verify it once. And then the economy the economy in general is pretty easy because you're not waiting for two weeks to onboard a new uh whether it's a new employee or a uh a new contractor or whatever it is. It's pretty fast. Fantastic. I I think gig economy is the biggest uh uh uh uh you know target for this, because there's a lot of churn, there's a lot of turnover, there's a lot of uh uncertainties, uh, because it's not a long-term relationship between the worker or the care provider or a service provider and a service seeker. It's you know, it's a time bond, but it's mostly transactional. So I need a plumber this afternoon, quick. If I have a plumber who's already verified, it's easy. And I get to verify that as well as a seeker.
SPEAKER_01:That's so important. I mean, my my daughter occasionally does babysitting gigs on care.com as an example. You couldn't think of anything more important, letting a stranger into your home to babysit your kids on a platform.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And then the key is that I, as a seeker of service, I should be able to verify the person coming into my uh house at any given time and say, hey, you know, instead of asking you, do you have a criminal record? It's a hey, do you have a uh uh true score, for example? Right? Uh truer score is similar to a FICO score. I can just make a quick judgment and I can say, okay, true score is X, Y, and Z. I get, I put a button, push a button, it's verified. Yep, you're not lying, and you're showing it to me lying. Think about the power of that. You have decentralized that and democratize the whole uh trust uh verification and trust issuance.
SPEAKER_01:So uh if I'm listening or watching to this episode, uh what's my call to action? Maybe I'm a professional, just an individual, maybe I'm an employer, maybe I'm a product manager at Wordash or what have you. How do I work with you? What are the initial one, two, three steps?
SPEAKER_00:It's it's a very easy, right? You know, uh because we are doing this trust as a service, so to speak. It's very easy. Who are you have as seekers and uh service providers, have them get their truer credential, it's there, and then anybody can uh we have uh simple simplified it, very similar to a credit bureau, for example. The credit bureau, you don't go collect all the financial data, you just go to the trade bureau and say, hey, what's a credit score and what's a credit report look like? It's exactly what it is. And then we have even made it even more uh taken out all the issues with the credit, the standard trade bureau. We have tokenized it, it's in a blockchain, the data doesn't spill and leak or any of those kinds of stuff. So it'll start coming together in terms of oh, okay, this person has um uh has verif has uh verified identity, with it, which is that includes biometric and biographic data, by the way, not just your facial. And then I've also verified their address, so it's further assurance. And then you have step up verification for different use cases, right? Oh, for this particular use case, I need to verify criminal. It's done. Oh, for this particular gig, it's a tutoring gig. I want to verify the education, that's done. Oh, in this particular case, I need a plumber professional license, the plumbing license has been verified and no criminal check. Right? So you can have those kinds of stuff pretty easy, and and it's uh it's it's uh uh uh easiest one, two, three, so to speak, as they say.
SPEAKER_01:Well, very, very practical.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, interface uh that businesses can uh easily uh uh uh apply. It's an API base, SDK, whatever it is. Within 24 to 48 hours, they can be up and running in our platform.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Frank, you're a light, you're you're a light in the darkness. Uh this was such an amazing opportunity. Uh onwards and upwards. Yep. What are you looking forward to as we head into the year end? You have so much going on. Um uh maybe talk about what's next as as as you think about an industry standard metric, you know, for yeah, this this is uh this uh uh survey has actually opened up so much as you know.
SPEAKER_00:I was probably skeptical and said, oh, everybody's probably lazy. Uh uh, they want to just get old. I think the the the the the transformation and and the uh uh uh trust as a uh currency is happening. It's for real. Uh it's not anymore nice to have, it has to, it is become a must-have. That is the biggest eye-opener for me. Again, the intensity with which this is being um uh looked at, and and uh we are very well uh positioned to uh deliver uh this because uh at the end of the day, I really want the societal good, right? Because A, I want to protect the consumers. At the same time, I need to protect the uh businesseslash relying parties. You can't have one without the other, otherwise the trust is broken. So this is a means of doing both sides good. And I think I'm appealing to all the businesses to step up to this and start collecting PII and let them uh have their own trust credential that you can verify because uh, you know, there are technology is there to deliver this. Whether it's us delivering or another company delivering, it's there. I really want this done for the society because everybody should have this, just like a uh uh driver's license, right? You don't go to a DMV every time somebody needs to verify you. You get it once, it's the same concept. It's a digital uh in the digital world, and then we have combined all of the um uh uh you know technologies that are available into uh this uh tokenized trust credential.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it makes it you make it seem so obvious, but uh congratulations on actually bringing this to market onwards and upwards.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Thank you, Raj.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, and thanks everyone for listening, watching, sharing this episode. And be sure to check out uh the TV show, uh techimpact.tv on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Raj. Thank you.