Many of you have told us loud and clear that the single most important thing we can do to improve Olio is to stop bad actors. That matters for our community, and it's also key to maintaining our strong relationships with the businesses who donate food. Below, we've answered the most common questions about how ID verification works, what we check and what happens to your data.

Olio introduced ID verification to prevent bad actors from creating new accounts and to improve overall trust and safety in the Olio community.

We're starting with two groups:

We plan to extend ID verification more broadly over time. Exactly how that will work for existing Food Waste Heroes is something we're still working through. We'll share more details well in advance of any change.

At the moment our focus is on rolling out ID verification for the Food Waste Heroes Programme. Over time, we may extend this to other parts of the Olio community on an optional basis, although for some specific user groups verification may become mandatory.

We accept most government-issued photo ID, including passports, driving licences, and national ID cards, from a wide range of countries, not just the UK.

*Please note: A UK Voter Authority Certificate (VAC) is explicitly intended only for proving your identity when voting, it cannot be used as proof of identity for any other purpose.

In the UK, around 95% of people have some form of photo ID, so we ask all new Food Waste Heroes to verify one. We can’t make any exceptions here.

If you're a returning Food Waste Hero who was suspended and you don't have a photo ID, get in touch with us at [email protected] and we'll take a look at your case. We can't promise an exception, but we'll evaluate it fairly. This review can take up to 30 days, so please bear with us.

We will accept valid IDs if they expired no less than five years ago. The purpose of the check is to confirm your identity, not whether you can travel.

No, you don't need to verify your address. This is an identity check, not an address check. Following feedback from our survey earlier in the year, in which the overwhelming majority of Food Waste Heroes supported the move, we've decided to implement full ID verification (photo ID) instead of the alternative: checking utility bills or databases like the electoral register.

The reason is that address checks are too easy to game if it’s based on public databases like the electoral roll, where one could easily pass as a friend or neighbour. More accurate hard address checks, such as recent bank statements, utility bills, council tax bills, add a lot of friction and they are very expensive to operate, and would exclude a lot of people that may not have proof of address, or whose address is not up to date. Identity is the stronger mechanism.

No, it doesn't have to match. That said, we'd encourage you to keep them the same, for a couple of reasons: iIf an account ever comes under investigation, our bad actor detection systems look at lots of different data points and a mismatch between your ID and account name is one of the things that can raise a flag. It also helps to avoid usernames that are just a single letter or initial. They're confusing for other Olio-ers and can make you seem less trustworthy.

So while it's not mandatory, using a clear first name (that all other users will see) that matches your ID is good practice for keeping trust high across the community.

We ran a formal and thorough RFP (request for proposal) process to select our chosen provider. Factors we considered included, but were not limited to:

Our chosen provider is GBG, who work with many well-known banks, telecoms providers, airlines and more.

The current verification process requires just a photo of your photo ID. You'll upload a picture of an accepted document, and GBG will check that it's genuine.

Not at present. We've chosen to start with the lightest-touch check, which is just a document check. If we detect significant attempts by bad actors to game the system, we may add biometric checks (taking a selfie or doing a liveness check) later.

Just your name and last name, date of birth, expiry dates of the photo ID used, and in some cases, the ID’s last 4 digits.

We use these to match you to your Olio account and to prevent previously banned users from coming back under a new identity.

In most cases, no. The document is handled by GBG, and Olio receives the information via an API, so in the majority of cases no humans - either at GBG or Olio - will look at your photo ID.

In specific scenarios, such as when investigating a complaint or reviewing a failed verification, a small number of authorised Olio team members may need to access the document via the GBG systems. Any such access is very limited, and restricted to authorised team members only.

The document image and verification record sit with GBG, not on Olio's servers. Please check their website for more information about GBG’s full retention details.

GBG only keeps Personally Identifiable Information (PII) for 31 days, and keeps an audit log for 1 year.

We have completed a Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA) and are satisfied that requiring ID verification is proportionate to our objectives which are to (1) reduce the number of bad actors, and (2) raise the overall standard of safety and security on the platform (particularly important given that Food Waste Heroes meet requesters in person, handle food in their homes and interact with store staff).

Our volunteer agreement and privacy policy have been updated accordingly, in line with UK GDPR.

When suspected bad-actor accounts are flagged and suspended through our normal processes, any attempt to come back to the app will trigger the verification check. They'll need to prove their identity to return, which is a meaningful barrier. If we then detect that the same person was previously banned from the Food Waste Heroes Programme, they won’t be able to become a Food Waste Hero. We also hope the verification step itself will deter misuse of the platform over time.

GBG's checks are designed to detect fraudulent, photoshopped, or AI-generated tampering on documents, which is one of the reasons we chose them. If we see patterns of account handover starting to emerge, we'll add biometric checks (such as a live selfie matched to the document) to close that loophole.