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How reliable is online ID verification

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An identity verification service is a service that is used by companies to ensure that the information provided by their customers is associated with a real person. Previously, one’s identity was verified in person by checking their ID cards, driver’s licenses or passports. Since many businesses are conducted over the Internet, nowadays, this identity verification services is used online. But, how reliable is ID verification online?

The first thing banks and companies use to verify their customer’s identity is KYC Initiation. The KYC (Know Your Customer) process is a simple process for online identification. This process is used by business and banks to obtain all information about their potential customers and make sure that their services are not at risk of being misused.

Online ID verification is not only used by big companies and banks, but also by many social media platforms, forums and smaller businesses that sell their products online. Due to the improvement of the technology, identity verification service is constantly developing while trying to harmonize security and the experience of users. Since the expansion of online services, companies have to upgrade their security systems in order to protect their customer’s data. There are many security companies that banks and businesses can turn to for help. For example, to secure your personal data, banks require you to have a credit card and a unique PIN code when withdrawing money from the ATM.

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When signing up for any social media, you will be required to come up with a unique username and a strong password. By typing our username and password when logging into a website or a forum, we are verifying our identity. However, since it is not always easy to think of a strong password, it won’t take a long time for an experienced hacker to gain access to our account. Additionally, we tend to connect all our social media accounts to our main email address. Thus we are making it easier for a hacker to access a number of our accounts, including online banking, by simple hacking our email account. To protect their users, companies like Facebook and Google have introduced a new way to verify your identity. That’s why you are required to enter your mobile phone number and use the code sent to you via SMS to log into your account.

Another way to verify your identity online is through biometric verification. The first thing that comes to your mind is fingerprint verification. It is mostly used on smartphones and it’s a great way to make sure that no one will scroll through your private messages and photos. To further protect the sensitive data on your phone, companies use an encrypted mathematical model instead of fingerprint images. However, since your fingerprint can be easily lifted from any surface and used to unlock your phone, companies thought of another form of verification and that is facial verification. This form can be used to unlock your phone, but also payment by selfie application was developed.

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How does this work? Well, in order to prevent the intruders from using a photo of you to unlock the device, there is a two-step verification process. The first photo will be taken to verify your identity, and then you will be asked to reposition and take another photo to confirm that you are actually in front of the device. Moreover, some companies have developed a technology that will prove your identity with blinking instead of taking photographs.

To conclude, trying to combine different online services with your real identity can be risky. That’s why government, banks, businesses even social media platforms constantly work on developing and upgrading their security systems.

Peter is a freelance writer with more than eight years of experience covering topics in politics. He was one of the guys that were here when the foreignspolicyi.org started.