Identity theft is one big hassle for know Your Business as well as for their customers. One in three online users has been a victim of any form of digital identity theft. Although it might seem small, when it comes to the digital space, the numbers become staggering. Digital ID fraud accounts for $5 trillion annually with the loss forecasting to grow exponentially in the future. Business entities have the responsibility to ensure that potentially harmful individuals are unable to access their services.
To prevent bad actors from initiating ties with legitimate organizations, digital document verification is a need of the hour. But it is also important to strike the right balance between onboarding trusted customers and preventing cybercriminals from enrolling with falsified documents. A manual procedure can make the verification tedious and time-taking that can make customers put off the process. Document authentication brings convenience and trust for customers while providing them what they need in time.
Digital Document Verification Benefits
Banks and other financial institutions have been performing ID verification for many years. But the process is entirely different when it comes to a digital setting where you cannot validate the originality of the document that easily since it’s not physically present. As a result, customers can experience friction, turnaround times can significantly increase and verifying businesses will have a hard time scaling their services.
A digital solution for document verification allows enterprises to identify and authenticate their users over an online channel remotely. These methods are now empowered with artificial intelligence models that can perform document authenticity checks. This streamlined way of verifying user IDs is foolproof since it takes into account biometric information such as the user’s facial identity to match it with their photo on the document. This allows enterprises to identify a wide array of ID fraud and take them down before fraudsters achieve their illicit purposes.
Digital Classifying Different ID Frauds
When it comes to customer onboarding procedures, fraudsters can use various types of falsified and authentically created documents to deceive the verification system. Some of these types of ID used in identity theft are listed below:
Altered Documents
When a cybercriminal gets their hands on someone else’s original ID document and modifies identity information to use it for their ill intentions. For instance, there can be documents that are forged while there are others known as “blank stolen documents”. In 2008, more than 3000 blank passports were physically stolen by identity thieves in the UK.
Illegal IDs
These types of documents are not stolen from anywhere but are created from scratch with the purpose of bypassing verification protocols. Further categorization of illegitimate documents could be IDs that are counterfeit or compromised. Camouflage and sample documents are also included in this list.
False Representation of IDs
Oftentimes, the documents that are original and credible are used in digital ID fraud. This can happen when a bad actor steals the document (physically or digitally) and uses it to open online accounts or to authenticate themselves over a digital channel. Falsely represented ID fraud also has different forms, for instance, documents that are obtained using fraudulent techniques while those that are imposter documents. Without a proper identity verification mechanism, this type of fraud is a great challenge for businesses.
Digital Document Verification – A Deterrent Against ID Fraud
Since each ID fraud is different in nature, it needs to be handled with a different approach. For example, the document verification solution can look for inconsistencies in format to identify modified and altered documents. Falsely interpreted document registration number, expiry date, and non-readable MRZ codes can reveal altered information.
Document visibility can also say a lot about it being photoshopped or compromised. Digital document verification scans user documents and compares them with templates to find any possible mismatches. But when it comes to falsely represented IDs, proof of ownership is necessary. Here biometric verification can clearly help since the user’s facial identity can be checked against their photo ID that confirms whether it belongs to the same person or not.
To wrap it up, digital document verification can provide an active defense against a variety of ID frauds that helps businesses prevent cybercrime and allows customers to enjoy a secure experience
