MetaCert

MetaCert has spent its life on one question: how the internet decides what to trust, and how easily it's turned against people.

Its founder, Paul Walsh, was at AOL in 1996 when he was among the first people impersonated online. Fraud, data breaches, corporate espionage, identity theft, and state surveillance have grown enormously, yet the industry's answer hasn't changed since the 90s. It still assumes a link is safe until something proves it dangerous, then leaves the person to tell the difference. That's why 90% of all cybercrime starts with phishing.

MetaCert pioneered the first security service for phones and tablets, for apps, for messaging, and for business tools like Slack.

That work led to the invention of Zero Trust URL Authentication, the first real advance in phishing protection in 20 years. It treats every link as untrusted until it's verified as legitimate, and rests on a database of confirmed-safe links, not a list of known-bad ones. Most leading security companies still depend on MetaCert's earlier, threat-based patents for security inside mobile apps, and MetaCert built the model to replace them.

Anyone can use Link Verifier, which runs inside the phone's share menu and checks any link, from any app, in two taps. Banks, telecoms, eSIM providers, and carriers add the same protection through an SDK, protecting their users. It reaches the US first through Mackie Mobile, a new security and privacy-first carrier whose subscribers get it automatically from launch in 2026.

MetaCert's website is an older snapshot and doesn't reflect this work.

MetaCert defends people against social engineering and targeted phishing, which makes it a target for the adversaries it works against. Paul Walsh advises high-risk people and those who work in hostile digital environments and speaks out against state-sponsored and foreign surveillance. For those reasons MetaCert keeps a deliberately hidden footprint, and you won't find our staff named here or on LinkedIn.