Trua CEO Raj Ananthanpillai’s new book, “The Trust Crisis: how big tech stole your identity-and the new model that takes it back” gets a stunning review from publisher weekly:
In this pointed debut call for better personal data security, Ananthanpillai (Implementing Global Networked Systems Management), CEO of the identity screening company Trua, reveals dire flaws in the way sensitive information is handled. Credit card and social security numbers, birth dates, home addresses, and even fingerprints, he explains, are stored by lenders, landlords, employers, governments, and e-commerce sites in hundreds of databases where they can be sold or stolen. Identity theft can saddle people with fraudulent loans, ruin credit scores, and impact job prospects. The cure, Ananthanpillai contends, is a “Trust Credential,” a smartphone app that stores data and selectively conveys it to whomever one wishes, with the information verified by a Trust Bureau. The system, Ananthanpillai explains, works like a credit card that approves payments without divulging bank account information to the merchant. The details are somewhat murky—there are blockchains involved, and procedures to prove to an AI that one isn’t an AI—and the book is basically a pitch for Trua’s own Trust Credential and Trust Bureau systems. Still, Ananthanpillai’s critique of the current slapdash data systems model is trenchant, and he makes a persuasive case for a useful tech innovation.
The book releases on June 30th 2026. Pre orders available