The biggest concern when it comes to online accounts and systems, even before digital financial transactions became common, was the prevalent identity theft on these platforms. The relative ease with which a person could pretend to be someone else without that person’s knowledge or consent made these platforms very risky.
Nowadays, modern remote biometric authentication mechanisms have made digital transactions and activities safer than they ever have been. The use of advanced artificial intelligence-based facial recognition makes engaging online a much more viable option than it ever has been before.
How does Biometric Authentication Work?
Biometric authentication is the use of natural and unique biometric traits and markers that every individual has to discern their identity. This can include things like their facial features or their fingerprint, which are the most common but can also include things like voice and even their iris.
The uniqueness of these traits for each human being allows there to be reliable identification that does not depend on the memorization of long and complex keys or passwords by the individual.
These scans either use already existing technologies found in most devices, or specially designed scanning systems, depending on the use case and the location.
Facial Recognition and Identity Theft
To understand how facial recognition in particular can help to prevent identity theft, we need to understand how someone’s identity would be stolen in this scenario. For identity theft, the thief has to gain access to the private device or information of the victim, usually by hacking or stealing their password or other authentication keys.
Here, facial recognition can play its role. This kind of system would require the person to present themselves in front of a camera to prove they are the owner of the account before they can get access. So even if someone does hack your login data, they can’t easily steal your face.
Now you might be wondering, what if someone uses a high-quality picture of my face, or an HD video of me to trick the system into granting access? Well, this is where the AI part of facial recognition comes in, through what is known as liveness detection.
The innovation that is Liveness Detection
Liveness detection is an artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered mechanism that helps to prevent unauthorized access to digital accounts and systems. It works to identify whether the input being provided to a facial recognition system is from a live individual, or a non-human image or other synthetic input.
The way it can do this is through something called a neural network, which is a system that can learn and make decisions independently, without human input. This network is trained in a process called deep learning on large datasets of real faces, which allows it the ability to be able to differentiate real faces from fake ones.
Your Personal Information Remains Safe
So what does all this mean in practice? It means that if a person who is not you wants to or tries to access your account, the system will stop them and prompt them to scan their face to confirm their identity. If they do not stop there and try to trick them with some form of fake image or video, advanced liveness detection will be able to prevent them from getting access to your private information.
So if they never have access to any of your private information in the first place, they will not be able to credibly pretend to be you in front of anyone.
Conclusion
Identity theft is one of the biggest concerns on online platforms, especially as more and more sensitive information, activity, and financial transactions move online. In this world, AI-powered facial recognition through liveness detection can help prevent unauthorized access to accounts, preventing identities from being stolen by malicious individuals.
