Should account verification with scanned ID be necessary?

O

Obelix

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All hosting companies I have purchased services from so far never asked me to verify my account in any way, but I have noticed that some companies ask for an ID-based account verification, meaning you have to send them a scanned copy of a photo ID such as a passport or driver's license. I find this to be kind of an inconvenience, and I try to avoid such hosting providers. What do you think? Would you implement account verification if you started a hosting company?
 
Obelix said:
All hosting companies I have purchased services from so far never asked me to verify my account in any way, but I have noticed that some companies ask for an ID-based account verification, meaning you have to send them a scanned copy of a photo ID such as a passport or driver's license. I find this to be kind of an inconvenience, and I try to avoid such hosting providers. What do you think? Would you implement account verification if you started a hosting company?
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you will find that most hosting companies will not ask for such verification as a standard practice.

were they will ask for verification is for dedicated servers, so high end VPS, if you are from a high risk country and fail other fraud checks.

We have never asked for such thing
 
Out of curiosity whereabouts are you located? We would never ask for scanned ID - I think if we did it would scare off 90% of our customers.
 
CanSpace said:
Out of curiosity whereabouts are you located? We would never ask for scanned ID - I think if we did it would scare off 90% of our customers.
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I am in UK, but you are like me, you dont offer high end products like VPS/Dedicated servers, so no need for scanned ID, with us maxmind + their Phone verification works for us.
 
We've requested scanned IDs on several occasions, but we usually do this when we want to make a certain person go away and don't want to state this directly.
 
We're located in Saint Petersburg, Florida in the US. The only people we've ever scared off by asking for this are ones that had certain red flags in their fraud check to begin with. We don't ask shared or reseller clients for this but it is required for dedicated servers. And as I mentioned, if the order seems a little fishy but not enough for a straight decline we'll ask for proof of identity.
 
It is pretty normal for any merchant who sell intangible products/services to require its customers to fill any payment authorization form or to ask them to provide any form of ID (credit card, driver's license, provincial or state issued ID). Especially when the fraud score of the order is larger than the average. I do not think that consumes should be worried about that. If the company is legitimate and if they can see that its is a serious, well-established business, than it is OK.

I have got my credit card copied or scanned a couple of time in the stores even I have physically presented it. One particular merchant told me they do this to protect themselves agains fraud and I understand them!

People travel, make online purchases from everywhere and sometimes is hard or even impossible to define whether any order is legitimate or it is a fraud. You beed to call the customer and ask them to confirm it. This is a part of the business!
 
Solaris Hoting does not do it on hosting products, but we are looking into doing it for all of our reseller products.

The reason is; you are starting up a business, a business is a legal idenity and we believe that if we have bee audited in anyway due to fraud we will have this information on hand.

If you sign up to a new mobile phone plan, they take your id as well.
 
Obelix said:
All hosting companies I have purchased services from so far never asked me to verify my account in any way, but I have noticed that some companies ask for an ID-based account verification, meaning you have to send them a scanned copy of a photo ID such as a passport or driver's license. I find this to be kind of an inconvenience, and I try to avoid such hosting providers. What do you think? Would you implement account verification if you started a hosting company?
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I agree that this is an inconvenience, and pretty unnecessary IMO for simple shared hosting accounts. Perhaps for higher-end dedicated servers, it might be useful, but still I think there are better ways.

Plus, there are services out there to help you to verify that an account is not spam.
 
We do ask for ID based verification in efforts to reduce fraud. Chargebacks result in higher priced services for the client due to the risk involved and the loss suffered by the company.
 
BrandonM said:
We do ask for ID based verification in efforts to reduce fraud. Chargebacks result in higher priced services for the client due to the risk involved and the loss suffered by the company.
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we only ask for ID for high priced items. We have many features to make sure we only get genuine orders. Since we started in 1999 we have only had 1 chargeback which we were suggesful in reversing as we provided prove that the person making the chargeback was the same person that ordered our services.

Basically the IP used for making the order was the same as the one the system logged for the email send stating the never ordered anything or heard of our company and apparently it was the same IP their bank logged for them.
 
We don't do this. If an order comes up as likely fraudulent according to billing/crm software and other screening methods, we reject it instead.
 
Scanned ID proofs should be a last option requirement for high-fraud regions. Hope someone comes up with a better solution since giving out personal ID's in the "internet" isn't that appealing or safe for any individual.
 
trueman1 said:
I will never give my scan id to anyone over the internet, this is very risky and could lead to identity steel.
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The majority of the "reliable" companies will have proper & secure practices when it comes to this. If your going with a kiddy host (who probably wouldn't even ask for ID even if an order is marked fraud) then you should be more weary and ensure you are sending details over a secured channel.
 
a majority of reliable companies will have system such as WHMCS/CE which they should have on secure servers and have an SSL cert for their WHMCS/CE or have a reliable support ticket system under a secure SSL. If you need to ask for ID get them to send these through one of these under the SSL, so the items will be encrypted
 
Obelix said:
but I have noticed that some companies ask for an ID-based account verification, meaning you have to send them a scanned copy of a photo ID such as a passport or driver's license. I find this to be kind of an inconvenience, and I try to avoid such hosting providers. What do you think? Would you implement account verification if you started a hosting company?
Click to expand...

I agree with you that it is an inconvenience. As a user, I would try to avoid hosting companies which ask for this kind of verification. The hosting company I am using now required phone verification and I think that's OK.
 
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