Valentine’s organization wants to ensure that users who sign up for their web services are who they claim to be. As part of the process they ask for information like birth date, Social Security number, and previous addresses. What type of activity is Valentine’s organization engaging in?

Identity proofing is used to validate a user’s claim to an identity. Here, Valentine’s company uses information that only a legitimate owner of that identity should have easy access to. Provisioning is the process of creating an account and providing it with appropriate resources and rights. Deprovisioning removes accounts and rights. Social identity is the process of using existing user accounts like those found through Facebook or Google to create accounts for existing users at other organizations like Valentine’s.