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A verified human needs a way to be recognized next time. How they’re recognized — by a stable identity or by an anonymous browser identifier — decides how smooth their return trip is. That’s the difference between an account and a guest.

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Accounts

An account is a person bound to a stable identifier you can re-present: a phone number or email, optionally tied to your own user via an external id. Because that claim is durable, an account holder’s uniqueness is permanent and portable. They keep their verified status across devices, across browsers, and across every product you run on VerifyYou. They clear cookies, switch laptops, come back a year later — still the same recognized human, no friction.

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Guests

A guest verifies without binding an identity. We recognize them by an anonymous identifier stored in their browser — no phone, no email, no account. That works, but it carries two consequences you should design around:
  • The identifier is only as durable as the browser. Clear cookies, switch to a private window, or move to another device, and the guest looks like a brand-new person. Their face, though, is still in the uniqueness pool — so on a fresh attempt they can collide with their own earlier verification and get blocked.
  • Guest uniqueness is cleared periodically. We expire guest face records on a rolling basis so the pool doesn’t fill with stale identities that would block people forever. The upside: a guest who’s been locked out frees up over time. The tradeoff: guests re-verify more often than account holders.
A guest who clears their browser identifier mid-cycle can be blocked by their own prior verification until that record rolls off. If your users come back often, prefer accounts.

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Which to use

Use accounts

Returning users, anything you’ll re-verify, or when you already know the user (link them with phone/email + an external id). Permanent uniqueness, minimal repeat friction.

Use guests

One-off, anonymous, no-login flows — a single collection form, a one-time gate — where you don’t hold an identity and don’t need the person to come back.
This is a product decision more than a code one: the same hosted flow handles both. You steer toward an account by binding a phone, email, or external id at initialize; with nothing bound, the person verifies as a guest.