Pond5 Artist ID Verification Unsecure?

Hi Dan, I can confirm that this email was sent by Pond5. Please know that we are requesting this additional information from contributors for the protection and safety of our marketplace, as it is the most efficient way to curb fraudulent activity to protect both our artists and buyers. I want to assure you that the links within the email are safe and confidential and no information will be shared. Please don't hesitate to contact us directly at support@pond5.com if you have any further questions. 

This raises a lot of questions guys. Are you authorized to collect identifying documents, by whom, any proof? If you are, why you delegate collection of sensitive data to a third party your contributors have no any relation to? I'm a contributor since 2009 I think, never any issue - what other proof you need? Sorry, in such circumstances I prefer taking the risk of never earning anything with you anymore than one of sending such sensitive data out to nowhere.

Please send a secure link or allow us to upload within our profile.  I've searched my whole profile after logging into pond5.com domain and see no notification or option for uploading i.d.  Thanks.

It is disrespectful, abusive and discriminating to ask artist to send such sensitive data to external company. Since we have accepted Pond5's terms, we have relation only with Pond5, not with wufoo.com.

I uploaded my id on this page: https://www.pond5.com/index.php?page=my_id_check and opened a support ticket requesting the verification to go manually, because I'm refusing to upload my personal details to a poll company.

Pond5, please make the process work from within your system, not from external company!

We really appreciate everyone's cooperation in our efforts so far regarding verifying artist identities, but we have found in some cases that verifying a photo ID alone is not meeting our needs. This time, we are conducting the verification using an industry leading digital identity verification partner who specializes in analyzing public online presence as one aspect of its review, along with other forms of traditional identity verification. This is a risk based approach that focuses our manual review steps more accurately than ever before possible. Please know that WuFoo is a well respected software provider. Their service offering states they utilize “a 128 bit SSL encrypted connection which ensures that your data collected through forms, and viewed with reports, is protected.

We can promise that no information will be shared and we will never provide Artists’ personal information to a 3rd party without your consent or a legal obligation. We maintain strict "need to know" security of this personal information internally as well. However, if you still feel uncomfortable, please feel free to upload your ID directly from your Pond5 account, under the Identification tab.

Pond5 isn't getting their money's worth from SurveyMonkey if they claim their connection for the form is encrypted, because it isn't.

It says in SurveyMonkeys privacy statement quote:

• SSL/TLS Encryption: Users can determine whether to collect survey responses over secured, encrypted SSL/TLS connections. All other communications with the surveymonkey.com website are sent over SSL/TLS connections. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) technology (the successor technology to SSL) protect communications by using both server authentication and data encryption. This ensures that user data in transit is safe, secure, and available only to intended recipients.

So it is Pond5's responsibility to require a secure connection for this information to be transferred.

I'm not trying to be rude, but there should be a basic level of commitment to securing our private information.

I think you're going to lose a lot of contributors if this is the new requirement.  Part of the reason a person is asked to show an I.D. (in person, and not a copy of it) is to prove who they are.  A copy of your I.D. should never be sent to anyone, period.  This would allow only one deviant employee to acquire that image and use it to pose as that individual, compromising their personal information, hence ID theft.  Having this information for selling stock imagery doesn't help legitimize who the true owner of the source is anyway.  I'm sorry, but you happen to be in the business of selling other contributors stock material and that is going to have risks, period.  Client's who purchase this material cannot be guaranteed of it's legitimacy just like we cannot be guaranteed someone won't buy our material from you and try to re-upload it back to you to sell it again.  The best way to 'try' to prove authenticity of our supplied material is to ask us to provide as much source material as possible showing that we are the true author's of the images we have posted (ie the other 7 photos that came out badly, the b-roll showing the same source river or flower bed, some screen captures of our explosion sim running, etc..  It's not a perfect proving-system, but it raises the bar somewhat.

Thank you Isabel, that clears a lot. I have already uploaded ca photo id, so all I need to is wait for it to be processed.  Thank you!

We appreciate your concerns but please know that none of your information will be shared. You are absolutely welcome to obscure any sensitive information from your ID, such as a passport number. We only need to see a photo, your full name and date of birth.

Again I wish to assure you that these new requirements are completely in the best interest of our buyers and artists. We've had too many problems with fraudulent artists in the past so we simply have to have stricter rules to curb this activity as best we can, and this method has proven the most effective. 

I already uploaded my ID under the Identification tab and it says that "Your ID on Pond5 has been approved", is there something wrong with it?

Hi Anna, we can confirm that your ID has already been reviewed. Thanks for checking with us :)