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Comment by Scott_Helme_ | Hacker News Reader

I totally disagree with #2. What relevance is the country I reside or the country the company was founded matter? Half of the time companies have registered addresses all over the world for tax reasons, not to mention things like franchises, subsidiaries and other legal structures that complicate things further.

"I know who is handling my data", really? You know their registered name but nothing about them or who they are, where they are (in the country), are they big/small, reputable, been established 2 days or 2 years, have 5 staff or 500 staff, nothing. In all honesty, the browser presenting that to me in the address bar has absolutely no value. It's a simple text string, how can it?

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> I totally disagree with #2. What relevance is the country I reside or the country the company was founded matter?

As you live in the UK, and you noticed business you thought was local or US based turned out to be from the Philippines or Russia, would you care? It's essential the country be included.

> You know their registered name

You know more than that, you know the specific legal entity you are dealing with - the name is part of that, but it's what the name signifies. It's accountability, exactly like every other verification platform: Instagram, Facebook, whatsapp, GPG + university directory with keys, GPG keybase. Oddly enough the verification process for verifying individuals on these platforms is almost identical to EV's.

The only place we trust random pubkeys and a network address is the web, and that's because GeoTrust wanted to save money in the early 2000s.

> are they big/small, reputable, been established 2 days or 2 years, have 5 staff or 500 staff

You are confusing identification with approval. See: every platform listed above (except Twitter, which does actually confuse them and in currently in a heap of turmoil over it). Also your passport - it doesn't mean you're a good person, it just means we know which person you are.

> As you live in the UK, and you noticed business you thought was local or US based turned out to be from the Philippines or Russia, would you care? It's essential the country be included.

If I "thought" it was local or if I "knew" it was local. The information is only useful if I knew it was local (prior knowledge) and EV UI tells me it's not (and I notice, and then act accordingly).

> You know more than that, you know the specific legal entity you are dealing with - the name is part of that

No, I really just know the name, because that's all that's in the EV UI unless I go digging...

> it just means we know which person you are.

And a DV certificate tells you which website I am, scotthelme.co.uk, which is what you typed into the address bar.

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