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POST Internet dating as a test case

I am beginning to sound like a broken record (note to younger readers: I mean of the vinyl kind) on this one, I feel moved to point out once again that IS_A_PERSON may turn out to be the most valuable credential in the very near future. If this is true, then Consult Hyperion should seek out a market that needs such a credentials right now and work out a way for our clients to provide services to this market as a scale business, right? My candidate? Internet dating. Why aren’t banks, mobile operators, card schemes etc helping this market?

The online dating industry generates around $2 billion in yearly returns in the United States only, with over 15 percent of US adults reporting utilizing online dating services and/or mobile dating apps.

From CoinReport Ex-hedge fund manager to launch blockchain-based dating, matchmaking platform - CoinReport

It’s a mass-market mainstream business that would be even bigger if it wasn’t rife with fraud (and, as you will recall from the Ashley Madison hack, bots). Surely this is the obvious test case for a privacy-enhancing attribute-centric identity infrastructure and a place for trusted institutions (e.g., banks) to implement new technology to help their customers. We already know how to solve the problem (having banks provide pseudonymous credentials) so let’s get on with it and start using digital identity to make a difference to a real-world problem that real people have right now.

 

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Police say the average dating scam victim is aged 49 and loses £10,000.

From Online dating conmen 'using love letter templates' - BBC News

Roughly two-thirds of the victims were woman and (unsurprisingly) roughly two-thirds of the suspects were male.

 

 

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Criminals can purchase scam "packs" containing love letter templates, photos, videos and false identities for as little as a few dollars on the dark web, said Prof Alan Woodward, cybersecurity expert at Surrey University.

From Online dating conmen 'using love letter templates' - BBC News

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