With artificial intelligence (AI) having the ability to create a virtual undetectable clone of your voice, one wonders, “How can I continue to prove who I am?” with today’s advanced technology.
Well, know that your financial institutions, along with countless other businesses are wondering the same thing. They want to buffer themselves from these new sophisticated scammers that fraudulently impersonate people to steal their money. There are several new companies that are working toward solutions to this question. This week’s article will highlight a couple and how they work to achieve this goal.
A typical fraud would have a criminal, armed with your account numbers and personal information, calling your bank or other financial account holders and impersonating you to get access to your money. Digital security companies such as Prove have come up with an interesting and clever solution to identify imposters by using the customer’s phone to help verify their identity.
The system will ping the phone’s SIM card to verify with the carrier that it is you at the other end of the transaction. It also checks how long the phone has been operational and the trustworthiness of the carrier to determine whether the phone is actually yours or if it is a burner using a cloned number. A new tool from the company uses your phone to prefill some of the information on an application via “secure handshake.”
“We connect those dots to answer the question: Is (the applicant) validating their own information,” says Mary Ann Miller, fraud and cybercrime executive advisor and vice president of Prove.
The other solution being used is identifying your behavioral patterns. BioCatch, an international tech company, has developed a proprietary algorithm that’s based not on devices or location but how you enter information and access your accounts on a day-to-day basis. For example, your bank account. Some people check their accounts once or twice a week, scanning to see if deposits or payments went through.
They log in, typically, either via financial institutions’ app or on a browser on their desktop. They type in their information in a certain cadence, with a certain amount of time spent between key presses and certain swipe patterns on their phone. All of this creates a behavioral profile.
When someone logs into the bank account and it doesn’t match the normal behavioral profile, BioCatch alerts the financial institution. The bank or credit card company could then confront the person logged into the account, asking for a one-time password. This request goes to the rightful account owner’s cell.
As we continue to strive to Keep an Eye on Safety for ourselves, you may want to check with your bank and/or other business accounts to inquire what steps they are implementing to help protect your identity and funds from scammers.
