FIRING LINE: Badge of exposure

FIRING LINE: Badge of exposure

By Robert B. Roque Jr. l October 13, 2026

The government has every right to write rules meant to serve the greater number, if not all the citizens it serves. Regulating online commerce in order to appropriately identify legitimate sellers and curb fraud is a sensible aim of concerned agencies like the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

However, these good intentions do not ensure flawless design in an online setting. A former student of mine pointed this out to me from sheer experience with BIR’s new registration seal badge, which online sellers and creators must display.

As a registered taxpayer who, with his wife, runs a Facebook page rescuing and feeding stray cats, it is mandatory for him to comply with this BIR badge. The page earns about $20 a month from reels and affiliate links, enough to buy food for the animals. Even so, they receive hateful messages and, worse, sexually inappropriate ones aimed at his wife.

He tested his own badge. It works, and that is what worries him: anyone who clicks or scans it sees his full legal name. If that happens to a cat page, he asks, what of women who dance, model, cosplay or stream, many of whom already endure stalking and threats?

To illustrate the seemingly poor design of this BIR badge by exposing one’s legal name, because when paired with a home address, photos and phone numbers, it gives scammers and harassers more to work with. Many small sellers list their homes as business addresses because they cannot afford premises.

He said he had asked about 50 small online business owners, and none of them knew of the requirement. Some people post their entire Certificate of Registration, exposing their TIN. And platforms differ: a badge on a YouTube community post gets buried, anonymity-minded forums bar identifying details, and TikTok users report trouble finding a place for it.

My student also observed that compliance seems most visible among small and mid-sized creators, leaving open how the BIR will enforce this across millions of pages.

My impression is there are unresolved questions the BIR owes the public: how identity exposure will be prevented, whether platforms without suitable badge spaces can comply, and whether enforcement will be even-handed. These deserve a serious review.

We have seen this before. The SIM Registration Act promised to end text scams. Years later, the National Telecommunications Commission concedes it is “not a silver bullet.” Syndicates buy SIMs registered under fake or stolen identities, shift to Viber, Telegram, and Messenger, and use fake base stations needing no SIM. The honest complied; the criminals adapted.

I urge authorities to weigh these cons seriously. They are as real as the fears of a student I once taught, who wanted to feed cats without worrying who might be watching.

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