Connection Levels

Curating your close relationships

The rule of thumb to follow as already described in the Guidelines is simply not to make connection with random strangers that do not really know or care about you, or you them. Do not consent to such connection requests. BrightID as social identity network is not like other social networks where you follow anybody or anybody can follow you without mutual consent. In BrightID, always curate your connections carefully. As described in the guidelines, these mutual connections are stored anonymously in the social graph forever and there are risks to making untrusted connections. If you have not read the Guidelines, please read them again.

Having established that, there are 4 levels of connections in BrightID.

Already know

These are people you know well enough to trust them. This might include family, friends, workplace colleagues, or people in communities that you care about. Close connections you develop in online communities can also be trust worthy and inter-dependable. It depends upon the level of kinship and trust you feel with each other which can only develop as you do things together over a considerable period of time regardless of whether it is in real life or online.

Recovery

This is a special connection level visible and settable only if you have connections with "Already Know" connection level. These are highly dependable people that can be your recovery connection for Social recovery of your BrightID.

Just met

Sometimes there are people you just met in real life or online, and you would like for them to get to know you as you get to know them. They could turn into a close trusted connection, an inter-dependable friendship, as you do things together over a considerable period of time. Or they could just as well remain strangers, or someone you do not trust.

So, use this connection level carefully.

Suspicious

Sometimes we are wrong about people we just met. The initial spark of connection you felt withers, and you may find yourself wishing you never consented to make the connection. In this case, change the connection level below "Just met" and set it to "Suspicious" or just remove them from your connection list.

You can also remove connections you do not want to see in your connections screen. However the anonymous connection between you and the person remains forever in the BrightID social graph.

So, it is critical that you curate your relationships with utmost honesty and care. Your curation and labeling helps verification protocols revoke duplicate BrightIDs and strengthen the social identity network of unique digital citizens. Sophisticated and higher lever verification protocols rely on the connection level you set. It helps to keep out agents that try to ruin and deplete the value of web3 by using multiple accounts to unfairly extract more than their share of value.

The next section provides more context to fair access from the perspective of the public as well as the web3 properties accessible as apps.