Since the arrival of digital platforms, the need for digital identity security rises. The reason is digital identities are more vulnerable to identity frauds. Common users do pay attention to digital identity security. They often become the victim of identity theft, in which their personal data is illegally used. With no exception, it is the primary responsibility of businesses that have user data. According to III, there were 4.8 million identity theft-related complaints received by the Federal Trade Commission.
After stealing a user’s data, a fraudster poses as that user claiming the ownership of data like name, dob, or address. Then he opens accounts against that information. As the foremost motive of fraudsters is to get financial benefits, they mostly target financial institutions of identity theft. Like opening a bank account through fake data or accessing a customer’s account. Through that, they can make transactions and withdraw cash from those accounts. The banks lose their credibility and the customer loses his money in this case. The customer can also sue the bank for not having identity verification services. As per the case, the bank will bear the burden of the lost money.
Identity Verification
In this updated world, there are multiple ways of customer identity verification. The most obvious way is username and password authentication where users are classified by these credentials. But this way is no longer sustainable as it can easily be stolen through social engineering tactics and hacking. Businesses that have no sensitive data and have a minimum threat of identity theft rely on password-based authentication.
Ways of Identity Verification
Here are the three ways of verifying the identities of individuals:
Online Identity Verification
This online identity verification is performed by online software that is assisted with the extended artificial intelligence algorithms. Identity verification is done when the user wants to register on an online platform. The process of online identity verification is explained below:
- User onboarding on the website
- Gives his personal details to the website
- Then the website asks the user to upload some supporting documents like an ID card
- The data is extracted from the document’s image uploaded by the user
- The extracted data is matched with the user’ entered data
- The software captures the live selfie of the user
- Facial recognition is performed by comparing live selfie and user’s image on the document
- If the data and selfie match with the data on the document, the user is allowed to open an account on the website
Supporting documents can be any paper certificate that is issued by a legal government authority. For instance, an ID card, a driving license, or a passport can be used for identity verification. The identity verification services rely on the data of these documents because it is considered that government authorities must have issued it after stringent data verification. For extracting data, OCR technology is used that is multi-language supported and gives accurate results in seconds.
Video Identity Verification
This is the same as the online identity verification, but a live interview of the user is conducted instead of documents uploading. An expert guides the user for the interview, he may be an employee of the business or a worker of the third-party verification provider.
Here is the process of video identity verification
- The user is connected with the expert on a live video call
- The user displays his ID documents to the camera
- The expert manually performs the facial recognition along with data validation
- For better accuracy, OCR extracts the data, and authenticity checks are executed on the document
The video is also recorded with the consent of the user. The recorded video is very helpful for future verification proof and cooperative audits.
Biometric Verification
In this method, the unique biological characteristics are used for identification instead of documents or passwords. Most commonly fingerprints, facial features, voice, and eyes used in biometric verification.
Biometric verification is widely used in mobile phone unlocking systems. The user’s fingerprint data is first stored and whenever the user tries to unlock his device. He just places his finger on the biometric scanner. The scanner matches this data with the previously stored data. This method is robust and takes no time for authentication.
Summing it Up
All the above three methods are secure and reliable for verifying individuals’ identities. The selection depends on the type of customers and the kind of business. There is a minor difference between the expenses in the implementation. But one thing that is clear is all can safeguard the data effectively. By identity theft protection, a business can build a wall against all types of identity frauds.