Ask HN: User Verification for Government Employees

[CarlosD]

Hi HN community, I'm building a web app where govt workers and citizens can interact with one another. If a citizen lives in a zipcode that the govt worker serves, they can interact.

It is important that neither group be impersonated. - How can I verify the identity of both groups? - How can I verify that the citizen lives in the zipcode they provided?

Any tools, libraries, methods, services are welcome!

Thank you in advance.

[pavel_lishin]

There exist services for verifying user identities; I'd offload the civilian side to that.

For government employees, that might have to be done by hand, by verifying through public records.

[CarlosD]

Thank you, for govt employees aloowing only .gov email addresses and then cross referencing public records seems like the way to go!

I'll look up some services for the civilian side.

Appreciate all the responses

[mostlysimilar]

For the government employees only allow .gov domains and verify email.

For people... maybe require a small temporary credit card change with a billing address matching their inputted zip code?

[CarlosD]

This is great, thank you, these seem like the solutions with least technical overhead for me.

I imagine the credit card charge may introduce UX friction, so perhaps we can also allow users to provide a picture of mail with their name and address.

[KomoD]

There's tons of KYC services that will do it for you

[CarlosD]

Thank you thats a new term for me, "Know your customer"

Will be looking these services up!