According to a report  a few years ago by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), most agencies lacked the required controls necessary to identify and authenticate users with confidence to prevent fraudulent or unauthorized access to federal information systems.  Identity proofing is now utilized by government business operations that demand accessibility while ensuring system integrity for services delivered.

USPS.com  and Identity Proofing

USPS is making changes to the customer registration process on usps.com to enhance the identity verification portion of the process and to provide customers with an additional option for accessing their accounts in the event that a customer forgets, or is otherwise unable to supply, his or her password. The Postal Service intends to ask each new and existing usps.com registrant to verify the email address that he or she used to create his or her account by responding to a communication that will be sent to the email that was previously supplied by the user. Customers who complete this verification process will be allowed to use their verified email address to reset their account passwords.

The Postal Service is  also proposing to partner with a consumer credit rating company for the purpose of securely validating the identities of customers online, a process known as “identity proofing”at usps.com

USPS is planning to implement identity proofing for personal (non-business) customers who select this option. Individual (non-business) customers who wish to validate their identities in this manner, and who select this option, would be required to answer questions submitted by a consumer credit reporting company. These questions would relate to the customer’s history, such as past residences, employment, and credit data. Any answers provided by the customer would be sent directly to the credit reporting company. That company would then issue a pass/fail rating which would be sent to the Postal Service. The Postal Service would then store this rating in association with the customer’s account. The pass/fail rating is the only information the Postal Service would store in the identity-proofing process.  Identity verification using this process would only be a requirement for certain products and services to be determined by postal management.