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There is an unbuckling of identity in the telecom network. Whether it’s a call from your bank, or a government login that doesn’t quite trust you, at some point, who is talking or being reached becomes obfuscated. There are many technical and historical reasons for this, but the bottom line is there is no reliable way for a person to say, “This is me,” and have a system respond, “I believe you.” Fixing it matters now more than ever, not only because of the poor user experience it creates, but because of the cost of getting it wrong. I have joined ID.me to help solve that problem.
Phone Number and Identity
Personal identity has never been truly integrated into communications. For years, we’ve been focused on making sure a phone number is valid and reachable. But thanks to the rollout of rich messaging and rich calling by the carriers, and the prevalence of WhatsApp and iMessage, that is no longer acceptable. Every friction point we wrestle with, whether routing ambiguity, trust scoring, carrier policy, fraud, or channel preference, ultimately rests on identity.
A phone number is the longest-lived digital user ID on the planet. A device is the most personal computer most people will ever own. And the network has always known who you are.
Yet, when these three layers unbuckle, when the number cannot stand in for the person, when the device no longer represents the number, and when the network no longer represents the truth, digital trust collapses. Human workflows break and fraud gladly fills the gap. Entire industries compensate by adding friction, which creates new problems for the very people they’re trying to protect.
ID.me is focused on solving that problem. Authentication must be simple, intuitive, and fraud-resistant, without asking people to memorize anything or guess what the system wants from them. It is the classic problem every builder likes: technically messy, high-stakes, and impossible to solve without rethinking the infrastructure from the ground up.
My work will focus on the signals that sit at the core of digital identity: devices, phone numbers, and the network truth underneath them.
This is Personal
I first encountered ID.me the way many people do: trying to access a major government website. “Government” and “user-friendly” are rarely synonyms, yet this interaction actually held up. That reliability caught my attention, and I wanted to understand the mechanics behind it.
So I started digging into the company and Blake Hall’s work. The more I learned, the more I realized the problem he was solving deserved a much larger platform. He ended up being a keynote speaker at ConnectMobile 2024.
We stayed in touch and when we met for lunch this fall, the conversation picked up right where it had left off. By the time I flew home, it was clear we were aligned on the problem domain and the solution path. In the end, it was the ID.me product that helped me find this job.
What’s Next
Digital identity should feel like your physical wallet: convenient, dependable, and always there when you need it.
I will keep writing, of course. This newsletter has always been the place where I try to explain what I am learning as I am learning it. That will not change. If anything, I expect it to get more interesting because the questions are getting bigger.
