The Q5id Guardian app has a clear purpose: to help find missing loved ones before they become another missing person statistic.
But where does our parent company, Q5id, Inc., come in? Why does the app need biometric identity proofing and authentication technology to work? What happens with the data that’s collected?
About Q5id
Our parent company, Q5id, develops highly secure, best-in-class identity proofing and authentication solutions for organizations such as banks, higher education, and telecommunications companies. This technology enables organizations to remotely onboard new employees as well as offer a secure way for users to verify their identity for high-value transactions.
While useful for businesses to protect their systems and their end users’ data, there’s more that such a high standard of protection could benefit. This level of security can guard just about anything we care about – including the people in our lives we love most.
Biometric Protections
When setting up profiles for your loved ones, you enter in a wealth of sensitive information about people who are particularly vulnerable if that information is stolen. That information is needed for Guardian volunteers to help find your loved one if they’re missing, but at the same time, all that data needs to be protected with the highest level of security.
Organizations dedicated to security, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), have been strongly recommending multi-factor authentication instead of passwords for years. The Q5id platform goes a step further, replacing passwords with a combination of highly secure biometric authentication algorithms.
These algorithms are used purely to match the calculation run on a given set of biometric data: your face, palms, or even a voice recording. No images are kept*, and future logins are handled by comparing the calculation outputs. You can’t be tracked or monitored with these algorithmic templates, and when stored, they are hashed and cannot be reverse-engineered. It’s a level of security usually reserved for enterprises with massive cybersecurity budgets – and it’s in use to keep the sensitive data in the Q5id Guardian app safe.
What do we do with your information?
Nothing.
We do absolutely nothing with your information except keep it safe.
The information we do keep is extremely limited and kept secure. Simple data such as name, address, or email is encrypted and stored in a secure data vault.
Your biometric data is converted into a character string – that algorithmically generated template we referenced earlier – and “hashed” in the process. “Hashing” means that nonsense information is inserted into the string along with the real information, and only the original hashing algorithm or key that we used to generate that hash can be used to un-hash it again.
Everything you share with us is kept tightly under lock and key, and only shared with the Q5id Guardian volunteer network IF you issue an alert and choose to share that information. As a volunteer, your information is never shared with anyone at all! You are anonymously connected to a subscriber who’s issued an alert if you are close enough to help and have information that can help with the search for a lost loved one. It’s entirely up to you what you share with them.
We do not sell your information, and none of the information you provide to set up your Q5id Guardian profile is used for marketing purposes.
We’re here to provide a tool that empowers communities to come together and accomplish something remarkable: finding a missing loved one before they become another statistic.
If you want to be a part of that mission, download the app today!
*Q5id does retain images where required by law or for specific regulatory compliance requirements; for more information, please see our privacy policy .
