4 ms·

Congratulations from me, too! A very impressive result in such a short timeframe. In danger of asking a silly question, I do wonder about this bit though: In

Congratulations from me, too! A very impressive result in such a short timeframe. In danger of asking a silly question, I do wonder about this bit though: In the very near future I will ask an impartial 3rd party take a look at our data (while preserving all privacy of our backers) and publicly verify that the join.app.net was operated in an honest manner. I might not be seeing the forest for the trees here, but how would anybody actually go about doing that? If you don't release identifying information (which I assume would include names, credit card numbers, and so on) how would anybody be able to verify? I'm not, in the slightest, implying there was any wrongdoing, I have no reason to believe that App.net is inflating any numbers or isn't "operated in an honest manner". I'm just genuinely curious to know how it would be possible to independently vet that all transactions were legit (or whatever it is you're trying to prove). Am I correct to assume that the best anybody could do would be to say that "the numbers looks right"? Or maybe something like "the amount of money transferred via Stripe to App.net is in the right ballpark"? If people can do better, how so? Again, genuine question.

guelo 14y ago
What I wonder is, why would anyone care?
darkandbrooding 14y ago
What follows is a layman just "thinking out loud." (But isn't that what Sunday afternoons are for?) When I use the term "auditor" I'm implying "employees at a firm" rather than "a single individual." What App.net desires is for a trusted third party to say, "Yep, they're legit." So first, you would select an auditor who has a good reputation financially, technically, and ethically. Presumably, you'd line up a couple of secondary sources to publicly reinforce the auditor's reputation and bless the auditor's methodology. It's been literally decades since I took any accounting classes, but I think you would need to follow the entire chain of some transactions, and this would necessitate showing real investor/customer data at some point. If you can secure that investor's/customer's permission, then sharing the data becomes a non-issue. How you get that permission becomes the issue. If your auditor's reputation is strong enough, their name alone may be sufficient to secure permission. But you can also take steps to create a "security narrative" designed to put the investor/customer at ease. You'd need to give the auditor access to your data, while preventing the possibility that they could leak this data. So the auditor would work in your offices, on your machines. You'd provide laptops so that you can disable all peripheral ports. You'd secure the laptops to the table. The machines would have no optical drives. Those machines would net boot, have wired LAN access but not WAN, and no wireless access at all. They would run the software the auditors required but nothing else. You'd confiscate phones and cameras from the auditors before they entered your audit environment. You could go a little crazy and record video of the auditors at work, with cameras angled so that you can see what notes the auditors are taking but not what screen they're looking at while they're taking notes. You could go a lot crazy and prove that the auditors are not sitting in front of any windows, thereby exposing data to high powered lenses across the street. You could sanitize the data your auditors see, so that the auditor initially sees "Backer N" or "Vendor Y" instead of an actual person or company name. Armed with some variation of the above security narrative, when the auditor says "I'd like to talk to backer N or vendor Y," you can present that narrative to the backer or vendor to secure their permission for auditor access to the information. I wouldn't be surprised if the average backer gets impatient and grants permission well before you're done explaining the security narrative.
rexf 14y ago
What would make sense is that the auditor be reputable and have access to all the sensitive private information. The auditor would check as many samples as they need to satisfy their conclusion that join.app.net met the $500k legit. Since the auditor was reputable and signed a contract to attest the $500k, the auditor would be careful to not divulge any of the sensitive, personally identifiable information.
chalst 14y ago
The 3rd party needs to be someone who is trustworthy in two senses: 1. They can be trusted not to misuse the authorisation they will be given to Dalton's Stripe account. The Stripe API (https://stripe.com/docs/api https://stripe.com/docs/api) does indeed give access to identifying information. 2. We can trust them not to misrepresent the facts on behalf of their client (i.e., Dalton). I've no idea what kind of institutions Dalton is thinking of, but reputable accountants should fit the bill.

guelo 14y ago

What I wonder is, why would anyone care?

darkandbrooding 14y ago

What follows is a layman just "thinking out loud." (But isn't that what Sunday afternoons are for?) When I use the term "auditor" I'm implying "employees at a firm" rather than "a single individual." What App.net desires is for a trusted third party to say, "Yep, they're legit." So first, you would select an auditor who has a good reputation financially, technically, and ethically. Presumably, you'd line up a couple of secondary sources to publicly reinforce the auditor's reputation and bless the auditor's methodology. It's been literally decades since I took any accounting classes, but I think you would need to follow the entire chain of some transactions, and this would necessitate showing real investor/customer data at some point. If you can secure that investor's/customer's permission, then sharing the data becomes a non-issue. How you get that permission becomes the issue. If your auditor's reputation is strong enough, their name alone may be sufficient to secure permission. But you can also take steps to create a "security narrative" designed to put the investor/customer at ease. You'd need to give the auditor access to your data, while preventing the possibility that they could leak this data. So the auditor would work in your offices, on your machines. You'd provide laptops so that you can disable all peripheral ports. You'd secure the laptops to the table. The machines would have no optical drives. Those machines would net boot, have wired LAN access but not WAN, and no wireless access at all. They would run the software the auditors required but nothing else. You'd confiscate phones and cameras from the auditors before they entered your audit environment. You could go a little crazy and record video of the auditors at work, with cameras angled so that you can see what notes the auditors are taking but not what screen they're looking at while they're taking notes. You could go a lot crazy and prove that the auditors are not sitting in front of any windows, thereby exposing data to high powered lenses across the street. You could sanitize the data your auditors see, so that the auditor initially sees "Backer N" or "Vendor Y" instead of an actual person or company name. Armed with some variation of the above security narrative, when the auditor says "I'd like to talk to backer N or vendor Y," you can present that narrative to the backer or vendor to secure their permission for auditor access to the information. I wouldn't be surprised if the average backer gets impatient and grants permission well before you're done explaining the security narrative.

rexf 14y ago

What would make sense is that the auditor be reputable and have access to all the sensitive private information. The auditor would check as many samples as they need to satisfy their conclusion that join.app.net met the $500k legit. Since the auditor was reputable and signed a contract to attest the $500k, the auditor would be careful to not divulge any of the sensitive, personally identifiable information.

chalst 14y ago

The 3rd party needs to be someone who is trustworthy in two senses: 1. They can be trusted not to misuse the authorisation they will be given to Dalton's Stripe account. The Stripe API (https://stripe.com/docs/api https://stripe.com/docs/api) does indeed give access to identifying information. 2. We can trust them not to misrepresent the facts on behalf of their client (i.e., Dalton). I've no idea what kind of institutions Dalton is thinking of, but reputable accountants should fit the bill.