When doing any sort of business with anyone there's always the issue of proving who you are and that you are authorised to make a transaction. Through history people have used signatures, official seals and fingerprints, but we need digital equivalents now. The main way to do that is through cryptography as this allows you to create a digital 'signature' that nobody else can create unless they have access to your private key. There's still issues with keeping that secure, but I won't get into that here.
There's an interesting discussion on The Cryptoverse where talks to the man behind Zonafide that uses the Ethereum blockchain to prove identity and authority. I know they have to be very careful about the language they use as some terms have legal meaning with accompanying liability. Their app is being tested by some UK councils already.
Image from Wikimedia
They discuss some of the fraudulent phone calls that are increasingly common. I actually had several of those yesterday from people claiming to be from British Telecom saying there was an issue with my router. Apparently they say you are due a refund and abuse your bank details. I didn't get that far as I was immediately sceptical and they gave up on me. I've previously had many calls from 'Microsoft support'. When someone calls you there is no proof of who they are. Even the phone number can be spoofed. Okay so they know who I am, but that information is easily available. I've also had cases where my bank calls me and then asks me for proof of identity. I've sometimes refused to give it unless I call them back. An app like Zonafide might help with these situations as they could post a transaction to say they had called me and I could verify it.
I've mentioned Keybase several times. This site lets you verify your identity across multiple services using digital signatures. I'd like to see something like that integrated into Steemit. Our identifies are valuable and we are likely to see more attempts to steal them. The technology is available to help us, but it needs to be simple to use. Keybase and PGP/GPG is too technical for most.
I'm interested in this sort of technology even if I've not gotten into actually programming it myself. That's a project for my to-do list.
Mine cryptocurrency in the cloud at Eobot, including Steem. You can earn as you chat using WowApp. If you use these links I get a small reward. You can recruit others to do the same.