Personal identity verification levels
- Andrew Watkins
As someone volunteering through Voluntarily.nz you want everyone to know that you are safe and trustworthy. That is why we ask all our volunteers to undergo a range of checks before they can carry out certain activities.
This page tells you more about the various verification levels.
Level 0 - No verification
When you first sign up for Voluntarily.nz we ask you to sign in with a personal email address. This is because it is unique - while nicknames and full names can be shared by several people. If you sign up using as email and password (rather than social media identity). then you’ll be sent a verification message to confirm ownership of that email address. If you don’t acknowledge the verification message you will be able to continue to browse the site, but won’t be able to participate in any activities.
Your Avatar and username will appear greyed out and people will not be able to click through to your profile.
Level 1 - Email verified
If you sign up using social media or enterprise single sign-on then your email is already verified. If you sign up with email and password you’ll get sent an email verification, once you acknowledge the verification and sign out and in again then your account will be email verified and you will be able to offer help to people asking and create new volunteering opportunities.
The emoji after your name shows your role: asker, volunteer, organisation Admin etc.
The shield icon shows your verification level.
Hover over the icons for more detail
Level 2 - Identity Verified
For some activities - especially online help level 1 email verification will be sufficient but for others - where you may be meeting people in person, the activity may require you to have a higher level of identity verification. That is your full name, date of birth and a reference document such as driver’s licence or passport.
To make it easy to validate your identity Voluntarily.nz has partnered with Verifi Identity to use their Cloudcheck service. This service captures and biometrically matches images of your ID document and face, to ensure a greater level of confidence in your identity. It includes automatic OCR text extraction from your document to validate name, date of birth, and address.
LINK TO walk through of the process
Level 3 - Police Vet Started
If your activity involves working with children or vulnerable people the activity provider may require that volunteers undergo Police Vetting. The New Zealand Police Vetting Service provides criminal history checks and other relevant information on potential and current employees, volunteers and vocational trainees to Approved Agencies that provide care to children and vulnerable members of society. Voluntarily.nz is an approved agency. (LINK?)
The vetting process requires us to be sure of your identity and gain your consent for vetting. Hence you must already be at level 2 to start the police vet. We will then collect further information from you and submit the necessary forms to the Police vetting service.
As the vetting process may take some time we will raise your verification level to 3 once you have submitted the forms. This will allow you to volunteer for restricted activities in advance subject to the check being completed.
Level 4 - Police Vet Completed
Once the police vet process completes we will receive a notification as to whether there are any reasons you should not be a volunteer. If ok then your verification level is set to 4. Otherwise, you will be able to continue using the site as only a basic member - able to request help but not volunteer.
The vetting process has to be repeated regularly (e.g annually) and you will receive a new goal card to repeat the check when it is due. If the check expires you will be returned to level 2.
Note that in order to preserve your privacy we are not able to explain someone might not be at level 4. You cannot infer from level 2 status that a person has failed a police vet, it may not have been started or may have simply expired.
What do the various levels allow you to do on the platform?
Depending on your verified level we intercept key action buttons.
The intercept points are:
Interested in an ask or offer opportunity
Creating a new ask or offer opportunity
On the client side this results in buttons either being disabled or showing a notification informing your of the required level.
On the service API side requests without sufficient level will be blocked returning 401 Unauthorised.
Level 0: - no verification
Show message - you need to complete email validation. If you have lost your validation email you can generate another by clicking reset your password on the Auth0 sign in form.
Level 1: email verified
As an asker you can be interested in an offer, or create a new ask.
As a volunteer clicking on interested in an ask your verify level must be equal to or higher than the verify level set in the op or parent activity.
You cannot create a new Offer at level 1
Level 2: Identity verified
As a volunteer you can create a new offer.
Level 3/4 Police vet
These levels give no new buttons but allow you to volunteer for ops requiring these verification levels.