Identity fraud, the fastest-growing crime worldwide, has devastating consequences for its victims. Being the enabler for numerous financial frauds, such as account takeovers and fraudulent insurance claims, the time has come for companies to safeguard themselves against this prevalent threat. Facial recognition systems are one solution for mitigating such risks. The good thing is, there has been an increasing institutional interest in this technology for the prevention of identity fraud. In this blog, we will be taking a look at how facial recognition biometrics solves the problem. But before we get to that, let’s start off by understanding what biometric facial recognition technology is. 

Understanding Facial Recognition Technology

Facial recognition online, also known as face detection systems, has the ability to identify individuals on the basis of their facial features. These technologies are powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning models that have the ability to detect patterns based on real-world data sets. 

For instance, facial recognition systems identify individuals by analyzing the distance between two eyes, length of the nose, the contour of the lips, and other such features. Whether a person is present among a crowd or walking alone down a street, facial recognition biometrics can accurately spot and identify them within seconds. 

How Does It Eliminate Identity Fraud?

Identity theft occurs when criminals steal another person’s personally identifiable information (PII) to gain access to their personal accounts. In a real-world scenario, here’s what happens. Criminals attack company databases through data breach attacks or carry out phishing schemes to gain access to customer’s information. Once the information has been acquired, it is used to commit other frauds including unauthorized access to financial accounts, insurance benefits, and numerous more.

Face identification can effectively curb this threat due to a number of reasons. Let’s go through them one by one. 

• Document and Face Verification 

For the accurate identification of individuals, facial recognition is employed along with automated document verification. During this process, the person not only gets analyzed through their government-issued ID card, but their facial features are also cross-matched with the image present in the ID document. This way, if the document holder is an imposter, they are detected within seconds and denied access to the financial account. 

• Liveness Detection 

Liveness detection capabilities of biometric facial recognition allow banks and other data-sensitive institutions to identify customers based on their live presence. In the event that a perpetrator tries to spoof facial recognition systems using face masks or replayed videos, the liveness detection feature is able to ascertain that the person is not present in real-time.

• Facial Mapping 

Facial recognition technology uses facial mapping biometrics to map an individual’s facial features from an image or video. The results are then compared against a database of known faces in order to find a match. This feature weeds out identity thieves that may be using fraudulent schemes to dodge security checks.  

• Micro-expression Analysis 

Facial recognition solutions use AI algorithms to detect the end-users subtle micro-expressions. This allows firms to accurately detect deep fakes, replayed video attacks, and other fraudulent attempts.  

How Can Facial Recognition Be Adopted By Businesses? 

The best strategy for mitigating the risk of identity fraud is to use third-party ID verification services. Such service providers offer AI-based solutions such as facial recognition biometrics that can detect identity thieves within a few seconds. Facial recognition solutions enhance customer onboarding procedures, provide anti-spoof protection, and also allow companies to stay compliant with KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations. By verifying customers through their ID documents and corroborating selfie, imposters are successfully filtered out. 

An added benefit of facial recognition systems is that they also allow companies to verify identities online. In today’s remote world, this has proven to be quite beneficial as other biometric methods such as fingerprint recognition had limited usage due to mandatory physical contact.  

Key Takeaways 

• Identity fraud incidents are increasing worldwide 
• This threat also enables numerous other frauds, such as financial scams and spoof attacks
• To identify criminals, biometric technology provides the perfect solution
• Facial recognition systems use the powers of AI technology to match identities against known biometric databases
• The analysis of facial features leads to the accurate and rapid detection of criminals, including identity thieves  
• Liveness detection, facial mapping, and micro-expression analysis makes it possible for companies to effortlessly keep identity thieves at bay