Digital Doppelgangers – Should We Be Worried or Not?

By Joe Bloemendaal, Identity Futurist at Mitek

Doppelgängers tend to make us think of evil twins and a token of bad luck in myths and folklore. Today, it seems the equivalent of this in the digital age is not too far off, especially in the world of online banking.

The number of fraud cases continues to grow in the UK. Identity fraud in particular, takes up a fair share of the cases at 58%, with 223,163 cases recorded in 2019 alone. 19 out of every 20 identity frauds involves a fraudster who has used an innocent victim’s personal information to sign up for services like credit cards or loans, and even opening up bank accounts.

Roughly half of all identity fraud is linked to the misuse of a bank account and these malicious actors are increasingly targeting older and younger generations. For those targeted, the experience may feel like discovering they have an evil (digital) doppelgänger who is on a mission to get their hard-earned money by impersonating them online.

Digital ID verification becoming mainstream

Having a digital identity has not just become useful. It’s now essential for anyone seeking financial services, or government support online. According to GOV.UK, out of 2.6 million self-employment claimants in the UK, 54% had no prior digital identity credentials. Digital identities – our digital doppelgängers – have become a necessity.

With cyber security and fraud threats growing, many will be wondering if their digital doppelgänger will be trustworthy once created. What if someone takes control of that digital identity? What if something goes wrong? Questions around protection and control are valid and won’t go away any time soon. But there is a silver lining: the more mainstream digital identity verification becomes, the more protected we are.

Let me explain. Once your digital doppelgänger is created and securely verified, it minimises the chances of someone else creating and claiming it on your behalf (just like website URL domains). The more genuine digital identities are created – and linked to by government support services, for example – the less risk of fraud there is. There are, of course, still some risks, namely from synthetic identities (where a digital identity is an amalgamation of several real or imaginary personas). But these are not yet mainstream – and technology exists to help stamp them out.

The point is that once a digital identity for a real person is created and verified, it becomes much harder for anyone to put that identity ‘stake’ in on their behalf. Knowing this, governments around the world now look to strengthen consumer identity protection by issuing cleverly encrypted passports and ID documents, following the lead of Estonia with technologies like NFC. Closer to home, the UK looks at consumer rights around digital identity to enable its wider use across the country, all while protecting residents and boosting the economy.

These ambitions are both timely and attainable. The more widespread and secure the use of digital identities becomes, the more we’ll keep attackers at bay. Technology has a major role to play, too. Using trustworthy digital ID verification technologies with the highest security assurance – without compromising speed for security – will be key to safeguarding our digital identities in the long run.

Why security must always come first

Take the example of GOV.UK Verify, the digital sign-up and verification portal that helps UK residents access 22 government services online. Since the onset of the pandemic and ensuing UK-wide lockdown, the demand for GOV.UK Verify’s services skyrocketed, as millions were looking to access Universal Credit applications, business and self-employed payments, car registration, and tax services. At its peak, the demand increased to 400 applicants per minute.

Now imagine, all those applicants’ identities had to be digitally and securely verified with as little delay as possible. GOV.UK Verify made the decision to prioritise security over speed to ensure consumer protection from the risk of identity fraud – even if it meant slightly longer ‘virtual queues’ before processing capacity could be scaled up to match demand.

When the pressure and stakes are high – like in the midst of the pandemic – security must trump speed. We know all too well that not all genuine IDs can be checked automatically. Some do not conform to modern document standards. There can be inconsistencies in document images, as well as limited data-capture technologies available.

There are inconsistencies across countries, too. Estonian IDs can be digitally verified with 100% assurance by using NFC (Near Field Communications) on smartphones, as a clever chip with 2048-bit public key encryption is embedded in each ID. Other countries’ identity papers aren’t as technologically advanced. For instance, some Italian paper ID cards still do not support even the most common Machine-Readable Zone (MRZ) enabled digital ID verification checks, making those documents extremely difficult to verify ‘remotely’.  It’s then easy to see why, once the legitimacy of an ID document is no longer in doubt when verified digitally, the entire process becomes faster and much more robust. All that’s left for the consumer is to take a selfie to check liveness and face comparison to the document.

Keeping our digital doppelgänger safe

As a society, we shouldn’t be worried about our twins – but we shouldn’t be complacent either. Forgeries are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and fraud detection technology needs to evolve and improve to keep these malicious actors at bay. Even the most sophisticated AI and machine learning-based verification technology is not perfect and can make errors – this is where human forensic experts can be deployed to verify and authenticate IDs based on the risk profile and the assurance level required.

Governments have a part to play too.  Enhancing the sophistication of ID documents should be at the top of their agendas, to ensure physical identity papers can be verified digitally with full certainty.

The right technology will go a long way to protecting consumers from identity fraud. Whether they’re opening a new bank account or shopping online for Christmas, they can rest assured that their digital doppelgängers are safe from malicious actors – and can bank or shop hassle-free.