Independent verification

Confirmation of a claim by a party with no financial or professional stake in the claim being true, taking forms such as investigative journalism, independently administered benchmarks, peer reviewed replication, or regulatory reporting requirements. Carries substantially more evidentiary weight than self reported results.

Confirming a request through a channel the account holder locates or already possesses, a number printed on a card, an app downloaded from an official store, a business's own website found by searching rather than by following a link in the request, rather than through any contact information the request itself supplies.

Confirmation of a claim by a party with no stake in the claim being true, using methods (code review, reproduction, audit) separate from the original claimant's own reporting. The defining move that moved Apple's differential privacy claim from an unverified rung 4 statement to a checked rung 3 finding.

Confirmation of a claim by a party with no financial or reputational stake in the claim being true, distinct from a company's own internal testing, self-published case studies, or a paid audit with undisclosed scope. The gold-standard answer to the "verified by whom" question.

The practice of confirming a request for money or personal information through a phone number, website, or contact method the consumer already had before the request arrived, rather than through any contact information supplied by the person making the request.