Identity verification timeouts should not be treated as approval or rejection

When an identity verification provider times out or its callback arrives late, the check has not completed, so the outcome is neither approval nor decline. The article warns against letting users through or rejecting them by default and recommends recording the technical failure separately from the decision. It describes a synthetic SQLite-based example in which a session has a deadline, late or unrecognised events are marked expired or unknown, and recovery occurs locally without polling a provider. In the hypothetical scenario, an expired session routes to human review or an authorized provider refresh rather than an automatic retry. The example is a dependency-free fixture and not a live provider integration.