The Daily Mail recently reported that fake passports using identities stolen from genuine people are being advertised and sold for just a few hundred pounds across the internet. An investigative journalist was offered a British passport that bore the name, photograph and date of birth of 61-year-old barrister, Aris Nicolson.
The married father of two was horrified to discover that his identity had been stolen by criminals and was being advertised for sale. More worryingly, his passport has never been lost or stolen, and his details are believed to have been taken when he provided it as a form of identity either in the UK or abroad.
HooYu Identify is a unique global identity confirmation platform designed to stem the rise of identity theft and build new defences for businesses seeking to defend against identity thieves using cloned or stolen ID documents. HooYu combines traditional verification processes like database checks and ID document validation with new identity technology such as digital footprint analysis, facial biometrics and identity confidence scoring.
In today’s digital age where fraudsters have easy access to stolen identity details and fake ID documents, there is a risk associated by taking these documents at face value.
HooYu Identify is designed to mitigate that risk by performing document authentication and at the same time checking that the customer identity attributes match to digital footprint sources such as PayPal, LinkedIn or Facebook. HooYu then calculates an identity confidence score based on the sources presented and the corroboration of the identity information across the sources.
This new approach to customer identity verification enables merchants to conduct Customer Due Diligence on a Risk Based Approach where ID documents are checked by technology and professional document checkers. The HooYu approach to identity verification means that impersonators can be detected.
HooYu previously conducted its own research into fake passports and discovered that, on average, 68% of people are unable to identify a fake passport with people over the age of 55 feeling the least confident about their ability to spot a forged document, with less than 5% thinking they would be able to so. Read more on our research here.
How HooYu Identify Checks a document.
Providing you with solutions
At HooYu, we do the hard work for you. No matter whether it’s an ID card from India, a passport from Poland or a driving licence from the Dominican Republic, our computer vision technology and our UK-based ID document experts can quickly validate customer ID documents, so you know who you’re dealing with.
For more information on how HooYu Identify can help you verify documents and prevent identity theft, please email us at info.identify@hooyu.com
