Vietnam now requires it for some purchases. It may be a fraud risk in Singapore. Or ML could be making it safe

The use of selfies to verify identity online is an emerging trend in some parts of the world since the pandemic forced more business to go digital. Some banks – and even governments – have begun requiring live images over Zoom or similar in order to participate in the modern economy. The question must be asked, though: is it cyber smart?

Just last Monday the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam began requiring face scans on phone banking apps as proof of identity for all digital transactions of around $400 and above.

The nation’s residents are not able to opt out of the banking rules, despite Vietnam regularly finding itself ranked poorly when it comes to internet privacy or cyber security.

Local media has weighed in to suggest that selfies will not improve security. And just days into the new regime, some apps have already been called out for accepting still photos instead of a live image of the individual.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    2•6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Just last Monday the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam began requiring face scans on phone banking apps as proof of identity for all digital transactions of around $400 and above.

    Late last month, US cyber security firm Resecurity flagged similar concerns when it found a spike in leaked identity documents containing selfies of Singaporeans on the dark web.

    Resecurity asserted that some were captured by cyber crime groups that run fake telemarketing or customer support scams and gather selfies so they can sell them to other miscreants.

    “Using selfies for identity verification has been growing steadily for around the last five years, but the inflection point was during the pandemic when people were forced to engage digitally,” VP analyst at Gartner, Akif Khan, told The Register.

    In his experience, businesses that rely on simple still selfies are typically smaller outfits that have experienced fraud and have implemented a selfie-based stopgap as they scramble to put a proper solution in place.

    Khan thinks concern about identity theft from still images and picture IDs found on the dark web is overblown, as most entities will require liveness checks for opening bank accounts and other tasks.

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