The Online Safety Bill has been receiving a lot of media attention in the UK lately and may mandate a digital KYC process across social media sites. The bill aims to create a safer online environment that protects consumers from fraud and scams; executives may find themselves personally liable for customer activity.
Technology executives could be on the hook for user activity
Microsoft, Twitter, and Snapchat – technology giants that span users of all ages have been contacted by MPs to share how these businesses prevent their customers from being scammed or defrauded.
The Bill, if it passes would radically change how liability works for social media products and for online services, it has in-built penalties for executives who would face personal criminal punishments.
It’s a prospect that brings swathes of new concerns for executives working in technology businesses. Having personal criminal exposure due to business activity will be a new experience for many executives.
Money Laundering Reporting Officers and Compliance Managers will be familiar with this pressure, having been criminally liable for money laundering activity for several years now. In effect, it means that technology companies need to take compliance far more seriously than ever before.
The legislation is set to make users accountable for their actions online. Meaning those who commit hate crimes, carry out scams, commit fraud, or perform any other harmful online activity can be identified and traced by law enforcement if necessary. Identity verification is the simplest way to do this, and it would put an end to anonymous accounts online. The bill will also see executives being held liable for this harmful activity if they fail to put a stop to it, most likely through suspending or terminating accounts.
It’s unclear as to the exact seriousness of the threat to executives the Bill will pose and how effective they’ll be in targeting executives. But given that big technology companies are facing crackdowns the world over, it should be taken seriously.
The best way to prevent any criminal liability from occurring, personal or otherwise, is to eliminate the problems in the first place. For technology companies that means scams and frauds.
A powerful digital KYC process can solve it all
At its core, this is an easy fix. Implement a strong digital KYC process during the customer onboarding phase.
Using KYC is a vital step in preventing frauds and scams online. Many of the accounts created to scam honest customers are linked to inoperative email addresses and fake names. With the powerful KYC elements found in the HooYu journey, this would no longer be a way for criminals to deceive customers. And if any particularly bold criminals chose to use real identity documents and details to create their scams, your business would be able to quickly locate them and purge them from your services.
Implementing a KYC element to the customer onboarding journey means that scammers and fraudsters would have to provide real identity attributes and have them backed up by verifiable proof of identity.
In practice, this isn’t so easy. Mapping out a strong digital KYC process can take months and it will take even longer to code all the configurations necessary. Then you need to make sure that the entire journey is optimised for customers to glide through without any hassle while still meeting the compliance obligations necessary to protect yourself and your business.
Luckily, HooYu has that all available out of the box. Our platform has configuration settings that can be calibrated without any coding resource needed – so your business can continue developing with zero interruptions.
We also provide an unparalleled customer onboarding journey, so that customers will barely notice the difference between providing their identity documents and joining any other online service.
Your legitimate potential customers will convert at pace, while simultaneously blocking fraudsters from ever using your service.
The potential network effects of this are significant. As customers realise that your business provides a safe harbour from criminals, they’ll be more likely to convert other potential users as no one likes being targeted for scams and they are currently flooding websites the world over.
