ID.me

ID.me

Basic information
Founded	2010
Legal Structure	Private
Industry	Identity verification
Also known as
Official website	https://id.me

ID.me is an online identity verification service founded in 2010 by Blake Hall and Matt Thompson. The goal of ID.me is "to be the last login you ever need to create and manage and the last time you need to verify your identity."^[1] Businesses such as Chipotle,^[2] Chick-fil-a,^[3] NBA,^[4] and Belk^[5] use ID.me to verify if a customer is a college student/employed, a real person, or served in the military to receive deals, purchase event tickets, or military discounts.

Users can request to close their ID.me accounts and opt-out of marketing emails and personalized advertisements.

According to the privacy policy, ID.me "will not sell, rent, or trade your Personal Information", however user information such as bio-metric, first name, last name, date of birth, phone number, email address, and physical address may be shared with federal government agencies.^[6] In addition, the company may share user information to third parties, such as customer support, web hosting, information technology, payment processing, direct mail and email distribution, and administration, and analytics services.

To create an ID.me account, you need to give personal information, which can include:

• First name
• Middle name
• Last name
• Email
• Phone number
• SSN/ITIN
• Street address
• Postal code

When a user requests to close their account, data is retained for three years. This data includes "events, logins, and transactions as well as verification history (e.g., community, vaccine, or identity details including documentation and data elements used for verification". Selfies for initial bio-metric verification are deleted twenty-four hours after completion.^[7]

ID.me is funded by private equity firms such as Ares Management funds,^[8] Ribbit Capital, Viking Global Investors, and CapitalG.^[9]

ID.me is the primary verification system used in the United States of America for businesses and governments, due to the service being "the only digital wallet that meets the federal government standards for secure login and multi-factor authentication [...] at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Identity Assurance Level 2".^[9] As of November 2024, ID.me has over 136 million members, 600+ stores, 65 health organizations, and 19 federal agencies using their service.^[10]

Logging in to the Social Security website requires a Login.gov or ID.me account, as of April 2026.^[11]

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the ID.me category.

American taxpayers who used Direct File (which was shuttered in 2026^[12]) were forced to utilize ID.me as a service.^[13] The IRS has claimed the service is "the only credential service provider currently available to the IRS that meets the identity assurance level 2 standard for identity verification and sign-in services", however, some lawmakers expressed their disapproval of the reliance on ID.me for tax filing, including Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Katie Porter who mention facial recognition's influence in the wrongful arrest of black men.^[14]

According to John Titlow from Business Insider, while trying to change his phone number on his ID.me account to apply for unemployment, the support agent asked for his sensitive information over e-mail, including scans of a passport and Social Security card.^[15] It is recommended to never send sensitive information over e-mail due to many e-mail providers, such as Google Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, not encrypting the contents.^[16]