User:Tristan1833/sandbox

ID.me (formerly TroopSwap and Troop ID) is an American online identity network that enables end users to prove their legal identity and attributes of their identity (such as veteran status) via a single login in exchange for discounts from brands and access to sensitive personal information from the federal government.

The company is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

History
The company was originally founded in approximately 2010 as TroopSwap, a daily deals website similar to Groupon and LivingSocial with a focus on the American military community. As those sites began to lose popularity, the company was reworked as Troop ID, which provided digital identity verification for military personnel and veterans. Troop ID allows service members and veterans to access online benefits from retailers, such as military discounts, as well as government agencies like the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. It was commended by the White House for providing this service to military personnel.

In 2013, the company rebranded again as ID.me with the goal of providing a ubiquitous secure identity verification network. To that end, they expanded to include verification of credentials for first responders and students, with the intent to add other groups such as American Automobile Association (AAA) and American Association of Retired People (AARP) in the future.

In 2013, ID.me was awarded a two-year grant by the United States Chamber of Commerce to Participate in the President's National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), a pilot project intended to help develop secure digital identification methods. Spike TV and the US Chamber of Commerce named Troop ID The Most Veteran Friendly Small Business in America on June 12, 2013. It was a finalist for The Wall Street Journal Startup of the Year that same year. Entrepreneur listed it as one of their 100 Brilliant Companies in 2014.

As of 2020, the company is now providing identity verification service to the State of Arizona to validate identities for the state's Pandemic unemployment assistance program authorized by Congress which provides unemployment assistance to gig-workers no issued an annual W2 statement. The process consists of taking pictures of artifact documents and uploading them to a users' account repository for validation.

Privacy and security
As part of its identification system, the company collects a range of personal information, including photographs and identification documents. The company verifies information by sending it to a number of "government agencies, telecommunications networks, financial institutions" and other companies which the company trusts and considers reliable. The company treats Internet Protocol addresses and unique device identifiers as non-personally identifiable, and releases them to third parties, along with location, occupation, language, the list of pages browsed at ID.me, and the URLs visited before and after using ID.me.

ID.me is one of three companies, along with USAA and Zentry, certified by the federal government to Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Level of Assurance 3. Nevertheless the company is not responsible for any damages from lost information, and does not guarantee accuracy or security of its service or website. The company and its users agree to arbitration by a specific arbitration company (JAMS) under Delaware laws, or small claims court in northern Virginia. Users agree to organize and pay for legal defense of ID.me and indemnify any losses it suffers, if it is sued by third parties.

Founders
Blake Hall is the co-founder and CEO of ID.me. He was a featured speaker at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity at Stanford University on February 13, 2015. Matthew Thompson was the co-founder and COO of ID.me but left in 2015.