The verified badge

You can request the badge from your account. It is free, and a person on our team checks it — not a computer.

You will need a profile photo and a phone number on your profile first — the photo is what buyers see beside your badge and what our reviewer compares with your ID, and the number is how we reach you about your request. Then send your photo ID, or your business documents if you are verifying a business, and we will review them and let you know.

Request the verified badge

For a person, we check one government photo ID — a national ID card, passport, or driving licence. The name must match the name on the account.

For a business, we check the business name and address against one official document:

• Business registration certificate, tax patent, VAT certificate, or a commune or sangkat business permit, or
• your latest electricity (EDC) or water bill in the business name, from the last 3 months
• No business licence? That is fine. Many real shops in Cambodia do not have one, and a recent utility bill in your business name shows the business is real and still open.

We ask for a document to check one thing: that you are who you say you are. This is exactly what happens to it afterwards — please read this before you send anything.

Your documents are encrypted the moment they reach us. They are never published, they do not appear on your profile or your ads, and they have no web address at all — there is no link to them that could be shared, guessed, or found by a search engine.

We do not store your ID number, your date of birth, or anything else copied off the document. Our reviewer looks at it and records only what kind of document it was. There is nothing on our system that anyone could look you up by.

• Encrypted from the moment they arrive.
• Only our verification team can open them.
• Every view is recorded, with a reason.
• Taken off our online servers once we decide.
• Destroyed 12 months after the decision.
• We never store your ID number.

Only our verification reviewers, and only to decide your request. Buyers never see them. Other sellers never see them. Other staff at Khonnect.com cannot open them either — reviewing identity documents is a separate, deliberately narrow permission, and the moderators who handle ads and reports do not have it.

A reviewer has to give a reason before a document will open, and we record who opened which document, when, and why. We built it that way so that looking at someone's ID is never casual, and is always answerable.

While a reviewer has your document open, their name and the date are stamped across it, so a screenshot can be traced back to the person who took it.

Once your request has been decided, nobody can open your documents through Khonnect.com again — the site refuses, for our own staff as well.

Approved or refused, once we have decided we take your documents off our online servers and move them to an encrypted offline system. They stop being reachable from the internet at all.

We destroy them 12 months after the decision. Not for as long as you hold the badge, and not for as long as you use Khonnect.com — 12 months from the day we decided, and then they are gone.

While your request is still open we keep your documents, because the reviewer still needs them. If we have asked you for something more, they stay until the request is finished. The 12 months starts on the day we decide.

After that, what we keep is the record of the check and not the document: that you applied, what kind of document was checked, who reviewed it, and what they decided. That is what lets us answer a question about your badge later without holding your ID.

We keep them for 12 months and no longer because we do not need them for longer. Khonnect.com is a classifieds site, not a bank — we have no legal duty to hold identity documents, and an ID kept for years is a risk to you with no benefit to anyone.

Ask us about your documents

Yes, and it happens the moment we find a problem — not after a warning. If the documents turn out to be false, if the seller is confirmed to have cheated a buyer, if the business has closed, or if the details no longer match the documents, the badge comes off the profile and off every ad straight away.

The seller is told why, in plain words, from a fixed list of reasons. What they are never told is the internal note our reviewer wrote — that stays with us.

If an account is suspended, the badge is hidden until the suspension ends. A business badge may also be checked again later, because businesses sometimes close.

Reviewers are people, and people get things wrong. So taking a badge down is not the end of it: for 90 days after we remove it, the seller can contact us and ask us to look again. We may ask for evidence — a current document, a re-registration, proof the shop is still trading.

If we got it wrong, the badge goes back exactly as it was, including the original "Verified since" date. A seller who was verified in January and wrongly suspended in September is verified since January, not since the day we fixed our mistake.

We send a reminder before the 90 days are up. If nobody contacts us by then, the badge is removed for good and cannot be restored.

One thing worth being straight about: while a badge is on hold or removed, the account cannot apply for a new one. The way back is to talk to us, not to start again.

Contact us about a badge

Report the ad, exactly as you would for any other seller. A badge gives nobody special treatment when a report is reviewed.

If you tell us a verified seller cheated you, we look at the badge again as well as the ad.