How we added anti-fraud to "Find a Friend"
When you build a service for lost pets, you quickly realize that scammers can do digital too. So we added smart owner verification using photos with the animal taken before the reported disappearance date.
When you build a service for lost pets, you quickly realize that scammers can do digital too. It’s an unpleasant but common case: someone “finds” someone else’s purebred pet and tries to claim it.
We didn’t go with 20 screens of bureaucracy. Instead, we added smart owner verification: we ask for photos with the animal taken before the date the pet was reported missing. If the user already has such photos, that’s a strong signal that the pet is really theirs.
This was a delicate balance, very much like in modern KYC/anti-fraud systems: minimum friction for honest users, maximum pain for abuse. So we didn’t overload publishing with extra steps, but we did add a protection layer where it actually matters.
In practice, it’s a simple mechanism that cuts off the most toxic fraud scenario without overengineering. Sometimes the best anti-fraud isn’t AI on steroids, but asking the right question at the right time.