I've posted this several times before but as this thread is specifically about Verified ID - and the difficulties hosts are facing in trying to comply, it's probably worth mentioning again...
So let's take a little look at the rather chequered history of the third-party outfit, to whom Airbnb has already entrusted the verification of millions of IDs (at a reported $2 a pop, on top of gigantic set-up fee) over the past 6 years...
Since early 2013, Airbnb has outsourced offline ID verification to a controversial start-up called Jumio, which later filed for bankruptcy in 2016, following the ousting of founder and CEO Daniel Mattes, amid allegations of financial irregularities. (Prior to starting Jumio, Mattes had also been sued by a former business partner for alleged fraud)
Mattes's replacement, David Stuut, was then recruited by Jumio backer Andreesen Horowitz, one of whose partners sits on the Jumio Board of Directors. (Similarly, Andreesen Horowitz are lead investors in Airbnb, and an AH partner also sits on the Airbnb board)
In response to vehement opposition from other shareholders, a $22.7 million stalking-horse bid by early investor and major shareholder Eduardo Saverin (Facebook co-founder) to buy out the company was blocked by the courts (citing "every red flag possible"), and was sold instead to private equity firm Centana Growth Partners, for just $850,000. (Saverin had resigned from the board just days before Jumio filed for bankruptcy, but remains heavily involved in the rebuilding of Jumio Corp., as its now known)
Saverin and other company executives were later sued by another shareholder, Bloso Investments, who accused them of having "grossly mismanaged" the firm and driving it into bankruptcy, and said they'd been running Jumio without proper financial and accounting controls for years.
And apart from the company that Airbnb continues to trust in processing and storing our most sensitive personal information, having a rather tarnished reputation itself, Jumio's competence in performing satisfactory and reliable ID verification has also been called into serious doubt on many occasions.
The following is a review by an Australian company that signed up for Jumio's identity verification services, but found them sorely lacking
https://www.reddit.com/r/ReviewTechUSA/comments/4go0ph/jumio_review_flawed_product_and_unethical_com...
In April of this year, Daniel Mattes was ordered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, to pay $17 million to settle fraud charges relating to his time as CEO of the company. Jumio's CFO also agreed to pay $421000 to settle charges.
Despite all that, Jumio Corp still managed to attract new investment ($55.4 million to date, and continues to rapidly scale in a $20 billion industry, most recently joining forces with FaceTec, to launch Jumio Go, a fully-automated biometric identity verification technology (hence the inclusion of selfies now as proof of identity)
User complaints about Jumio Corp's product, such as false positive results, two different results from the same ID, fraudulent submissions not being picked up, and temperamental technology still abound in 2019 however, as evidenced by a multitude of threads on this forum and others, decrying the deficiencies and difficulties in user experience.
But hey.. it's all about "trust", isn't it?
