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Identity Verification — Is This Person Real?

Short answer

Identity verification answers one question: does the identity a person presented to you hold up against the public record? Sleuthify checks whether the claimed name, employer, business, professional credential, and location are corroborated by registries and published sources, and flags specific contradictions rather than returning a general dossier.

Draws on 9 record sources, each named below with the statutory basis we rely on. See the list.

Run a free scanRecords Report $249 · Typically 20 minutes, guaranteed under 4 hours

A narrow question, deliberately

This is not a profile of the person. It is a test of a specific set of claims you were given: that they are named X, that they work at Y, that they run a company called Z, that they hold licence number N, that they live in city C. Each claim is either corroborated, contradicted, or unfindable, and the report says which. Keeping the scope this tight is what makes it both fast and defensible — we are verifying the representation made to you, not building a file on a stranger.

What a fabricated identity usually looks like in the record

Real people accumulate a paper trail with consistent dates. Fabricated ones have a characteristic shape: a business name that does not appear in any registry, a professional designation with no matching registrant, an employer whose staff directory has never listed them, a domain registered weeks ago, a claimed decade in an industry with no trace before this year. The absence pattern is often more diagnostic than any single finding.

Where this is genuinely useful

Before wiring a deposit to a contractor. Before meeting someone from a dating app. Before signing with an advisor who claims a credential. Before accepting an investment pitch from someone you met online. In each case the cost of the check is trivially small against the exposure, and the question is narrow enough to answer well.

What you receive

In the report

  • Whether the claimed name appears in public records consistent with the claimed location
  • Whether the claimed employer or business exists in a corporate registry
  • Whether the claimed professional credential matches a real registrant in good standing
  • Whether the claimed domain or website registration is consistent with the story
  • Whether court, insolvency, or regulatory records contradict the presented identity
  • A specific list of contradictions and unverifiable claims, not a score

Honest limits

What verify someone's identity online will not tell you

Every item here is a structural limit of the Canadian record, not a paywall. Anyone promising you these is either misrepresenting what they have or describing something unlawful.

  • We confirm profile URLs you already have; we do not search platforms for a person's accounts
  • Photo identity and reverse image analysis are outside our scope
  • A clean result means no contradiction was found in public records, not that the person is trustworthy
  • Recent immigrants and young people legitimately have thin records

9 connectors

Sources this search queries

Each source carries the paragraph of the Regulations Specifying Publicly Available Information that permits collecting from it without the subject's consent.

Every source we operate, with fees and coverage

Figures

Numbers worth quoting

Each figure carries its source and the date it was current.
MeasureValueSourceAs of
Reported losses to romance fraud in Canada, 2024$59MCanadian Anti-Fraud Centre2024
Registry fees and coverage change. Figures are stated as of the date shown, not as a standing guarantee.

Questions

verify someone's identity online — common questions

How do I check if someone I met online is real?

Verify the specific claims they made rather than trying to profile them. Does the employer exist in a corporate registry and has anyone confirmed them there. Does the professional licence number resolve to them in the regulator's public register. Was the company's domain registered recently. Do court or insolvency records contradict the story. A consistent absence of corroboration across every claim is the strongest single signal of a fabricated identity.

Can you tell me if someone is using fake photos?

No — reverse image analysis and photo forensics are outside what we do. We verify records, not images. For images, a reverse image search on the photos you were sent is free and usually decisive; if the same face appears under a different name on other sites, you have your answer without needing us.

Will you search someone's social media for me?

Not in the way most people mean. If you give us a specific profile URL we will confirm it resolves and whether the public display name is consistent with the identity claimed. We do not search platforms to enumerate someone's accounts, and we do not ingest or summarise profile content. Canada's Privacy Commissioner held in the Clearview AI findings that harvesting publicly-visible social profiles is collection requiring consent, so that boundary is a legal one rather than a product decision.

Is verifying a contractor's licence something I can do myself for free?

Often yes, and you should. Most provincial regulators publish a free public register — electricians, real estate agents, insurance brokers, lawyers, engineers, and physicians all have searchable public directories. Where we add value is doing all of them at once, cross-checking the corporate registration behind the business name, and noticing when a licence is real but held by someone other than the person you are dealing with.

Related

Where to go next

Related services

Guides that use this search

By province

What this search costs and concludes depends on the jurisdiction.

All provinces and territories

Next step

See what the public record has — free

We tell you how many records match, where they are, and whether a full report is worth buying. No credit card.
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Verify Someone's Identity | Sleuthify