Socure Debuts Selfie Reverification to Root Out Deepfakes

ID verification firm Socure has introduced a new way for businesses to validate return customers.

Selfie Reverification, announced Thursday (Aug. 8), can validate customers online with a selfie from any device in less than two seconds.

“Identity verification isn’t a one-time event. As consumers interact with an online service over time, their risk profile can change,” Pablo Abreu, chief product and analytics officer at Socure, said in a news release.

“That’s why it’s important to determine you are still who you say you are, without going through the full verification process again.”

According to the release, Selfie Reverification capability matches an incoming selfie with the previously verified ID headshot photo submitted during onboarding, while also looking for signs of a deepfake and age discrepancies between the photo and the users’ credentials.

“With identity attacks at an all-time high, once-validated good identities can go risky in an instant,” the company said.

“Selfie Reverification allows simple, fast and accurate trust decisions particularly important at the riskiest of moments — a high-value banking transaction, validating the identity of a babysitter-for-hire in an online marketplace, verifying age for alcohol deliveries.”

In addition, Selfie Reverification has integrated ‘liveness’ detection technology which makes sure the person taking the selfie is actually present, preventing spoofing techniques like face masks, image-of-an-image and deep fakes.

The release follows Socure’s recently partnership with online notarization firm Proof has  to prevent fraud in consumer agreements and forms, which the companies called a $200 trillion market opportunity.

“Industries are fighting an ever-increasing risk of fraud across their entire customer lifecycle,” the companies said in a news release, pointing to FinCEN data showing that false records and forgery cause more than $45 billion in fraudulent activity per year.

“Businesses are susceptible to fraud from the moment an account is opened, to every form, authorization, loan, and transfer that customers perform,” the release added. “These interactions occur through documents that are approved, signed and notarized.”

Meanwhile,  PYMNTS discussed identity attacks earlier this year with Bryan Lewis, CEO of Intellicheck, who offered a stark take on the damage a fraudster can inflict with a few bits of information.

“People don’t realize how easy it is to steal your identity. If I can get your social media account or your email, I can change everything about your life,” he told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

“I can change every password you have,” he added, before offering an even more ominous scenario: “I can ruin your reputation.”

That’s particularly bad news for merchants, as up to 25% of consumers say they are willing to abandon a retailer if they learn that their identities have been stolen via a breach with that enterprise.