Real or Fake? The Difficulty in Detecting Fraudulent Identity
Am I who you think I am? My name is on this article, right next to a picture. You could send me a comment on Twitter or do a Google search to see if I’m legitimate. But is that really enough proof to prove my identity, to show that I am the actual person behind this post?
(I am, by the way—unless someone hijacked my identity between the time I typed this on my computer to the moment it was posted.)
For whatever reason, you trust my identity, just like my friends on social media or my bank when I conduct online transactions or a government agency that requires an extensive form to be answered. Humans are trusting by nature, and we want to believe that what we see is true. The reality, however, is that cybercriminals have improved their game so much that it is almost impossible to tell truth from fiction.
More Alike Than Different
Socure, a leading provider of predictive analytics for digital identity verification, recently looked at identity and its data points based on actual fraud attempts. The result turned into the company’s first “Aida’s Insights on Identity: The Fake ID Edition” report, which revealed fraudsters have become so good at what they do that they’ve managed to virtually eliminate any reliable indicators once used to tell real from fake.
“After processing billions of data points, we confirmed that consumers and fraudsters are far more alike than different when it comes to digital identities,” Sunil Madhu, chief strategy officer for Socure, said in a formal statement. “While differences in fraudster behavior certainly remain, they have become subtle enough that relying on a handful of variables is no longer sufficient; the complex relationships between multiple variables must be analyzed to get an accurate result.”