Using Biometrics To Build Digital Trust
(Biometric Update, Nov 21, 2022)
Facial recognition has become nearly ubiquitous in the world today, from unlocking smartphones to verifying an identity when crossing international borders. But using facial recognition doesn’t come without its problems. According to Karl Ricanek, a University of North Carolina Wilmington professor and director of the school’s Face Aging Group Research Lab, the software can make mistakes based on common factors. For example, puberty, skin tone, and even gender can impact how aged a person looks and cause the app to guess the wrong age. These factors can lead to adults being locked out of the platform or children being given the wrong level of access.
ID.me Lied About Its Facial Recognition Tech, Congress Says
(VICE, Nov 21, 2022)
The controversial facial recognition firm hired by the US government during the height of the pandemic is being slammed by members of Congress, who say the company misrepresented how its technology works and downplayed excessive wait times which stopped Americans from collecting unemployment benefits. New evidence shows that ID.me “inaccurately overstated its capacity to conduct identity verification services to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and made baseless claims about the amount of federal funds lost to pandemic fraud in an apparent attempt to increase demand for its identity verification services,” according to a new report from the two U.S. House of Representatives committees overseeing the government’s COVID-19 response.
Mobile Devices Move Passwordless Future to the Here and Now
(PYMNTS, Nov 21, 2022)
Mobile devices, biometrics and identity tokenization are helping to make passwordless identity authentication a reality, Rodger Desai, chief executive officer of Prove Identity, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster. The payoffs are huge for consumers, Desai pointed out, since they won’t have to wrack their brains to remember passwords or write them down only to lose the post-it. Companies that leverage passwordless authentication technology won’t have their call centers and support staff besieged by frustrated customers having trouble logging in. Security teams will find it easier to guard against hackers. And for merchants and banks, consumer loyalty increases as they’re able to personalize transactions and interactions with consumer-permissioned data. Consumer behavior is indeed changing. Desai explained that individuals navigating the digital shift have found it easy and appealing to apply for a credit card or deposit account with just their phone number (Prove, he said, has been a key part of that innovation).
Indian Government to Activate Digital ID at Birth
(Global Government Forum, Nov 21, 2022)
The Indian government is working to expand its ‘Aadhaar’ digital ID scheme by assigning unique identification numbers to citizens at the time their birth is registered. Sixteen states in India currently link Aadhaar ID numbers to birth registrations. The Indian government’s plan to expand the programme means that all 28 states could start issuing Aadhaar digital ID cards at the same time as birth certificates in the coming months. First introduced by the government in 2009, Aadhaar cards – each of which features a unique 12-digit number – were officially rolled out by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, in 2014. The cards are used by enrolled citizens to apply for jobs and book railway tickets, for example, and contain data that are used by government to prioritise and economise welfare services. The Aadhaar system is overseen by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority tasked to provide each Indian citizen with a unique digital ID that cannot be fabricated or duplicated.
Sella Group Pilots Biometric Fingerprint Card
(Finextra, Nov 21, 2022)
The rollout of the new card, providing biometric verification for both direct and contactless payments and co-developed with Idemia, is led by Sella Personal Credit through a pilot project involving a select group of Visa cardholders in Italy. Each customer receives a kit containing a device allowing for the enrollment of their fingerprint on the card without having to go to the bank branch. The biometric chip is powered directly by the POS in case of contact payments and through a magnetic field for contactless transactions. The cards can be used worldwide and are recognizable by any EMV-certified POS and ATM terminal.
